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THE 

lYSTERY OF No. 1 3 

BY 

HELEN B. MATHERS 

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THE MYSTERY OF 

No. 13 


BY 


HELEN B.J«ATHERS 



40 


NEW YORK 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

SUCCESSORS TO 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 




Copyright, 1891, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 


/ 


The Mystery oe No. i3. 


CHAPTER I. 

“ O, long, long is the winter nicht, 

And slowly daws the day, 

There is a slain knicht in my bower, 

And I wish he were away.” 

The light grew stronger, and crept beneath the 
lowered blinds that hid the gay flowers on the bal- 
cony, yet suffered their sweet smell to enter through 
the open windows, spread itself softly over the car- 
pet, and showed a woman’s gold thimble lying there 
— then stole toward the shut folding-doors, from 
the other side of which not a sound or movement 
had come for hours. Here it seemed to pause 
awhile, as if afraid, then stealthily passed underneath 
them, and traversed an oddly-shaped apartment 
that ended in a place not much bigger than a large 
recess, and partly hidden by soft, pink muslin drap- 
eries, now pushed roughly on one side, and held there 
by something that had fallen heavily between them. 

In pity seemed the light to touch it. There it 


6 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


lay, a strong figure lying face downward with sunny 
crown abased, and brows pressed to the coverlid of 
a wide couch, upon which a woman was lying in a 
deep sleep, her head pillowed on her outstretched 
arm, a picture of perfect innocence and rest. 

With the smooth coverlid drawn to her chin, and 
her air of happy dreams as she securely slept, she 
looked as if she had not stirred since she laid her 
down — as if, indeed, she would not stir now, did 
not someone come to wake her, though the light 
kept on ever widening, and growing, till the pink- 
hung room was full of a soft, rosy atmosphere fit for 
such a Princess as she, yet was strong enough surely 
to rouse the man who lay with arm doubled up be- 
neath him, in attitude unnatural and strange. 

Serenely the clock ticked away the moments and 
the minutes to hours ; the Dresden china shepherds 
and shepherdesses on the mantel-piece had long ago 
nodded each other good-morrow, and the pictures 
on the wall exchanged glances, first of amaze, then 
of inquiry, as to who was the new-comer who dis- 
turbed their privacy, and come, alas, in such woful 
and uncourtly guise ! 

The white mouse, looking perchance for his absent 
little master, popped his pink nose out of the cage 
that was never very far from the Princess, and, 
aghast at what he saw, went in again. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 7 

In the street without, in the house within, the 
cheerful noises of everyday life began, and swelled 
each moment louder, so that when a footstep in the 
next room caused a vibration of the floor, she opened 
her eyes, and lay listening, and broad awake. The 
couch was so low that what lay at its foot did not 
come within her range of vision, as she fixed her 
glance on the folding-doors, watching for them to 
open, and her maid with the tea come in ; and as she 
looked, one swung back, and through it came Rose, 
erect, pimpante^ in her smart cap and apron, smiling, 
too, as if she had some especial cause for satisfaction 
that morning. But as she came forward something 
— something between her mistress and her, arrested 
Rose’s attention ; the cups on the tray in her hand 
rattled violently with the tremor that shook her, 
and shuddering, gasping, she backed away, with 
staring eyes fixed on that — backed till she came to 
the door, and escaping through it, shrieked — such a 
shriek as clove through wall and window, and made 
the passers-by stand still in the street, with that 
heart-quake which men know when tragedy stalks 
red-handed through their midst. 

Meanwhile her mistress, guided by the woman’s 
eyes, had raised herself, and by some dreadful instinct 
born of courage, felt herself drawn toward instead 
of away from it — so that on hands and knees she 


8 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. 13. 


crawled toward the still figure, which dumbly spoke 
its own eloquent message of eternal separation from 
her and all living things. 

A hand’s-breadth away from it she paused, looking 
down at the tossed, silky, fair hair set in a wide halo 
of blood — blood that had soaked and welled and 
ebbed for many an hour through the long summer 
night into the coverlid at her feet. 

One arm was doubled beneath his chest just as he 
had fallen, the other lay stretched out to its full 
length, pale palm uppermost — a hand that would 
never sow or reap any more, never help or hurt any- 
one any more, never be filled with those gifts that 
the prime of a man’s life well spent may reasonably 
be hoped to. bring. 

Steps were coming, people were coming, with a 
thundering, rushing sound, all hastening madly to 
that horror in the house, that smell of blood in the 
air that we call “ murder ! ” and that we stand agape 
to look on, even while our flesh recoils at it. 

The master of the house came first on that terrified 
wave of struggling humanity — came in to see the 
murdered man lying there, and his wife on her knees 
beside him — across the body their eyes met, and oh ! 
what a look was there ! 

The glance of horror, wonder, and pity with which 
she had first gazed down at the murdered man, had 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


9 


been swiftly followed by one of dawning compTe- 
hension, changing into one of passionate loathing 
and contempt. This, too, was gone, when her hus- 
band came, and their eyes leaped together. 

“ He thought me guilty, and he killed that hound 
— and he did well,” she thought, with a wild sense 
of exultation that brought a strange light to her eyes, 
and a heave to her breast, and in that moment he 
saw her not as the Elizabeth he knew, but 

Breathless they gazed, in one lightning moment 
engraving on each soul the likeness of its fellow’s 
guilt, then, without a sound, the woman shrank 
down, hiding her face and shuddering, away from 
him, and from life, alone, as it were, with herself and 
the dead. 

Up they came, those people, surging up from with- 
out (who had set the house-door wide ? ) bearing the 
officers of the law with them into the dainty drawing- 
room, and through the folding-doors, that would 
hardly open far enough to admit them, pausing in 
the second room as in the auditorium of a theatre, 
the last room’ of all appearing a stage, with its two 
inmates posed in a silent and terrible tableau. 

Outside it stood the husband, white, rigid, his 
arms folded on his breast, apparently as incapable of 
movement, or of speech, as what was lying at his 
feet. 


lO 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


Rose, the maid, recovered herself first. Pushing 
her way through the throng, and casting a look of 
contempt on her master, she stepped over the dead 
man with a shudder, then snatched up a silk dress- 
ing-gown that hung over the back of a chair, which, 
with a small table and the couch, completed the 
furniture of the recess, and threw it round the lonely 
figure that crouched on the bed. 

Her mistress did not move while being wrapped 
in it, nor when she felt the slippers put on her naked 
feet ; but when Rose tried to raise her, she got up 
with a quick, defiant movement, and sat down with 
the wide folds of silk draping her royally, looking 
past her husband at the rout beyond, as Marie 
Antoinette may have done at the crowd that sur- 
rounded her tumbril. 

Yet her lips quivered — not for that poor dead man 
— her heart was hard as a stone toward him, and 
she had no thought of the suddenly arrested life, or 
of the pity of it, but because her husband stood aloof 
from her, because he had let the sin of blood-guilti- 
ness hold him back from clasping her in his arms — 
because he could see her there alone, nor move one 
step to take his rightful place beside her. 

“ Let us bear it together ! ” was the anguished cry 
of her heart ; then the pain passed, and a cold feeling 
of anger grew in her breast. If she could forgive 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. II 

him, what quarrel had he then with her ? In that 
moment she despised him — as a woman despises a 
man who does not rise to the occasion as she herself 
has done, ay, and higher yet, for however magnifi- 
cent a woman’s pluck may be, a man’s should al- 
ways be able to soar above it. 

One of the policemen kneeled down and turned 
that quiet figure at the foot of the bed over, reveal- 
ing a calm and handsome face, marred only by a 
small hole in the forehead, through which a bullet 
had passed, and out of which the life-blood had 
ebbed quietly away during the night. 

Barry Ross had been a good-looking enough 
fellow in life, but in death his face took on a sweet- 
ness and majesty that brought tears to the eyes of 
many who looked down on him that day, bitterly 
resenting the foul injustice that had robbed him of 
his birthright — life. Rose, who stood with her back 
to the wall, glanced swiftly from mistress to master, 
and back again. Their faces told nothing ; in fact 
so unnatural to the onlookers seemed their stony 
acceptance of the situation, without any of that 
display of amazement and horror which might have 
been naturally expected, that the conviction gained 
ground that both were “in the swim,” and knew all 
about the night’s work, and each other’s share in it. 

To Elizabeth St. George it seemed afterward 


12 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ. 


that she sat for hours in that alcove, facing the 
mouthing, staring multitude ; but she could not re- 
member what anyone had said, or what answers 
she had given to the questions put to her, for at her 
heart’s tribunal was standing the man, once her 
lover, now her husband, who thus openly, by his 
silence and his desertion, accused her. 

All things have an end, and at last the moment 
came when Rose was free to take her mistress 
away. 

Gathering her robes around her, Elizabeth rose, 
and swerving a little to one side lest they should 
step on the body, and the crowd dividing for 
them, the two women passed through the rooms, 
and up the staircase, and out of sight. 


CHAPTER II. 


“ Whaur shall I gae, whaur shall I run, 

Whaur shall I gae to lay me ? 

For I hae killed a gallant squire 

And his friends they seek to slay me.” 

It was Rose who locked her mistress into her 
bedroom, who got the house cleared of its uninvited 
guests, the body of poor Barry laid upon the bed 
that had not been slept in that night, and who, then, 
leaving her master still stupefied and alone in the 
place where he had stood throughout, returned to 
her mistress, and shut herself in with her. 

Apparently he had not moved yet, when Mr. 
Skewton who had been telegraphed for from Scot- 
land Yard arrived, and found him there, aged and 
lined, in the space of one hour, to such a likeness as 
his own mother would have found it hard to recog- 
nize. 

Was it only last night that Elizabeth had said to 
him, It is so close and hot upstairs. Jack, and Rose 
thinks I had better sleep downstairs to-night, do 
you mind ? ” and then she had rung for her maid, 
and Rose had made up the Chesterfield couch in 


14 the mystery oe no. IJ. 

the recess off the second drawing-room, and she had 
said in joke how easy it would be for any one to 
come in and murder her, walking over the leads of 
the great library built out at the back. 

He had proposed then that he should come down 
too, but this she would not allow. She knew it 
was all fancy, disliking her room at the top of the 
house so much, but he should not be allowed to 
suffer for it, and then she had gone gayly upstairs 
to undress, coming down presently in her dressing- 
gown, and with Rose in attendance, who placed on 
the table beside her bed the night-cap Mrs. St. 
George usually took the last thing at night. Jack 
always laughed at her for taking it — but take it she 
did, with the utmost regularity. It consisted of a 
teaspoonful of Jamaica ginger in hot water, with 
sugar, and on that particular evening there was 
barely enough for her usual dose in the bottle, and 
she told Rose to be sure and get some more next 
day. When the girl had gone to bed, Elizabeth 
had done some dancing steps in her flowing robe 
before a long glass, had frolicked around generally, 
cut some jokes, reviewed the events of the day, and 
finally, after kissing Jack, had drunk her nightcap 
and retired to bed. 

“ I shall come down in the night and see how 
you are,” he had said, as he tucked her up, and 


THE MYSTERY OE NO. JJ. I5 

then she had asked him to leave the windows open 
in the second room, and the room beyond, and to 
close the folding-doors between. This he had done, 
returning to his books, but going in again to look 
at her later, and by the glimmer of the light, under 
the snow-white silk shade, he saw her lying there, 
lovely in her sleep, framed in the delicate pink 
with which the recess was hung, and he had kneeled 
down to kiss her pretty hair, and bless her with all 
his heart. And then — he still seemed to see her 
lying there, the house hushed in silence, and pres- 
ently the stealthy sound of a man’s step on the 
stair. He saw the outer door open, seemed to feel 
the pause before the folding-doors yielded to the 
midnight intruder’s touch — saw Barry Ross stand- 
ing there on the threshold, his sunny looks gone, 
his likeness changed from the man of honor to the 
renegade against his friend, and the brute in inten- 
tion, he saw — O God ! what more did he see as he 
turned away his eyes, shuddering ? Presently he 
came nearer to the bed, now tossed and disordered, 
that had been so smooth when Elizabeth awoke 
that morning. He stooped over it — what business 
had he with it, and why did his hand steal to his 
breast as he arose again, starting violently at sight 
of the man who at that moment came through the 
folding-door with swift, silent tread, and eyes that 


1 6 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ, 

said, “You are mine — you have done murder, and I 
am here to prove it.” 

Jack’s calm had broken at last, and with a ven- 
geance. He sat down, or he must have fallen from 
excessive agitation, and if ever a man wore the 
livery of guilt, he wore it then. 

The quiet, keen - eyed man laid his hand on 
Jack’s trembling one, hidden in the breast poc- 
ket of his coat, and drew it out, with what it 
held. 

“It” was a toy pistol of beautiful make and 
quality, and looked innocent as a child’s plaything, 
lying in the detective’s hand. 

The shiver in Jack’s limbs had passed, he looked 
afraid of nothing as he said : 

“ I don’t deny it. I shot the man with that. Now 
do your duty.” 

Mr. Skewton’s eyes narrowed. 

He felt that he would have cheerfully paid a good 
deal to have entered the room three seconds sooner 
than he had done. 

“ Is this pistol yours ? ” he asked. 

“ See for yourself,” said Jack, and Mr. Skewton 
looked, and found a name and date inscribed on the 
barrel of the pistol, and the name was Jack St. 
George, and the date over a year old. 

“ The sooner you take me away the better,” said 


'7'I/£: MYSTERY OF NO. tj. 

Jack curtly, and turned on his heel and went into 
the other room. 

Mr. Skewton, left alone, shook his head. There 
was a good deal more in this business than met the 
eye. He had naturally only an imperfect knowledge 
of the circumstances of the case, and the account of 
the enterprising constable who sent for him, had 
pointed to a woman in the case, whose absence from 
the scene puzzled him. 

He followed Jack into the other room, where he 
stood looking out on the balcony with the sweet 
breath of stocks and mignonette in his nostrils, so 
that, ever after, the sight of those homely flowers 
turned him faint and sick. 

“ There is a lady in the case?” said Mr. Skewton. 

“ My wife,” said Jack, briefly. 

Mr. Skewton paused, and before the pause had 
grown wearying, Jack filled it up. 

“ My wife sometimes sleeps downstairs,” he said, 
his face calm and resolute, “ the weather has been 
very hot lately, and she was brought up in the 
country, and feels the poor accommodation upstairs 
very much.” 

“ Why poor ? ” said Mr. Skewton, looking round, 
“ these rooms are a very fair size. I imagine those 
above are the same.” 

“ The rooms above are not ours,” said Jack ab- 
2 


l8 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

ruptly. “ They belong to Mr. Barry Ross— who 
is dead.” 

“ He was your lodger ? ” said Skewton. 

“ My lodger,” said Jack proudly, “why not ?” 

Probably no man ever looked less like a lodging- 
house-keeper than Jack St. George did then, but 
then nobody surely was ever so little like a traitor 
and a hound as Barry Ross, and yet 

“H’m,” said Mr. Skewton, stroking his chin, “ and 
a friend 7 ” 

“ So I thought him till last night. Listen. He 
loved my wife, though she did not know it, and be- 
fore God I swear I never suspected him of the 
treachery in his heart. My wife went to bed, in 
that recess you saw, about eleven. I sat up reading 
for an hour, then went in to see that she was all safe, 
and went back. I had turned out the gas, and was 
about to cross the outer room to go upstairs, when 
the door communicating with the staircase opened, 
and someone came in quickly, and went through 
the folding-doors. He went straight to the recess 
— in the dim light I saw him — and in a second — in 
one lightning moment of fury — I shot him as he 
turned to face me, and he fell down dead across the 
foot of the bed.” 

“ And your wife slept through all this ? ” said Mr. 
Skewton, incredulously. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. /J. ig 

“ Don’t you know ? ” said Jack in surprise. “ She 
is deaf.” 

“A tragedy indeed,” said Mr. Skewton, dryly; 
“ but one would think even a deaf person would be 
wakened by a pistol-shot within a yard of her.” 

“ But she did not stir,” said Jack calmly, his al- 
ways resolute jaw and mouth more resolute than ever. 

“ And after ? ” said Mr. Skewton. 

“ I went upstairs,” said Jack. 

“ And then ? ” 

For a moment Jack looked like one suddenly 
checked — at fault. 

“ What does the way in which I spent the latter 
part of the night matter to you ? ” said Jack, sharply. 
“ I went to bed.” 

“ To bed ! Leaving that body as a pleasant sur- 
prise to your wife when she woke ! H’m — and 
you shot an unarmed man. Had you a grudge 
against her ? ” he asked, suddenly. 

Jack made no reply. 

“ Where is she ? ” said Mr. Skewton. 

“ Upstairs.” 

“ You have had a conversation together since this 
— occurrence ? ” 

“ Not one syllable.” 

“ H’m,” said Mr. Skewton, “ then she does not 
know who did it ? ” 


20 


nm MVsfERy or m. xj. 


“Yes — she knows.” 

“ She knew,” said Mr. Skewton keenly, “ that 
you might have a motive for killing this young 
man ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

He said it defiantly, and as if he had put shame 
for her miles away. from himself. 

Mr. Skewton went out softly, called up a sub- 
ordinate whom he left outside the drawing-room 
door, and ascended to the suite of rooms above. 

He had already visited them, but now, after a 
glance at the quiet figure on the bed, he stepped up 
to the toilet-table. 

“ H’m,” he said, “ evidently interrupted by some- 
thing or somebody in the act of undressing. Cravat 
thrown off, but collar still round his throat, his 
watch and money lying about. What’s this ? An 
envelope — and no postmark — a woman’s writing, of 
course, a woman who is probably in the house.” 

He went down to the drawing-room with the 
letter in his hand. 

“This is your wife’s handwriting?” he said. 
“ Mr. Ross evidently received this after he came in 
last night.” 

The young husband turned. He seemed to have 
shrunk in his clothes, and Mr. Skewton was an- 
swered instantly by the pale look on his face — a look 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


21 


aghast, terrible, and which illumined and confirmed 
the theory that the detective had set up, perhaps 
disappointing him not a little, as at first sight there 
had seemed to be stranger circumstances in the case. 

“After all,” he thought, contemptuously, “it was 
a very simple murder, simple in its motive and 
clumsy in its accomplishment, and the course of 
justice will be swift and easy, so that no possible 
kudos can be attached to any detective concerned 
in it.” 

How could he tell through what furnaces of 
agony Jack was passing as he stood with back 
turned to him, motionless as a stone? 

That bitter cry out of Scripture was ringing in 
his ears, that cry out of the far ages, that will ring 
on for ever, And it was even thou — mine own 
familiar friend. ...” 

“A splendid fellow,” thought the detective, men- 
tally measuring his inches, “ but who would have 
thought him coward enough to shoot an unarmed 
man ? ” 

Suddenly he stepped back, and through the fold- 
ing-doors, looking round with a glance that em- 
braced everything, especially the window that Jack 
had left open overniglit, and which was open still. 
Beneath it was part of the roof of the dining-room, 
and beyond it, and a trifle higher, a large expanse of 


22 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


leads, bounded by the windowless backs of the 
houses in a by-street that ran at right angles with 
the leads. 

Windowless ? Ay, but in the brick-tiled sloping 
roof of one of these houses the quick eye of Mr- 
Skewton detected a single skylight, shut, it is true, 
but more than wide enough to admit the body of a 
man, while the drop to the leads below was not 
more than twenty feet. “ The window open, and a 
skylight in another house by which any one could 
get in here, and go all over the house,” said Mr. 
Skewton to himself, “ if it were not for the pistol, 
and this man’s damning evidence against himself 
— though he is too eager by half — I should say 
this might be a very interesting case indeed. Any 
way,” his eyes remained riveted to the skylight, 
“ it won’t be such plain sailing as I supposed.” 

He had the more reason to believe himself correct 
in this supposition, when in the course of his travels 
round the room he - discovered, and promptly an- 
nexed something that, however humble in itself, was 
destined to play an important part in the drama that 
had yet to be played out. 

“ And now for Mrs. St. George,” he said. 


CHAPTER III. 


“ The shallowest water makes maist din, 

The deadest pool the deepest linn.” 

He did not trouble anyone to show him the way. 
The house was fashionably small, and he had already 
been twice in the second floor, so, unless on the roof, 
he must find Mrs. St. George in the top rooms of 
all. 

He went boldly up, and passing the doors of two 
servants’ rooms that stood open, knocked gently at 
the third one, which was shut. 

No answer. 

He knocked again and with the same result. 

Then he said quietly, with his lips to the key- 
hole : “ Your husband is under arrest for the murder 
of Mr. Ross.” 

A sound of voices, a rush as of a whirlwind, and 
the door was flung open to bring the detective face 
to face with a woman whom he afterward described 
as the “ sweetest little morsel he ever saw in his 
life.” 

“ You must be mad,” said Elizabeth on the in- 
stant, “ my husband came up to this room late last 


24 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 


night, and never left it till he was called from his 
bed this morning by that horrible news. If he had 
gone down again,” she turned authoritatively to 
Rose, “ you must have heard him, must you not ? ” 

The detective turned to look at the girl addressed, 
looked her through and through, yet was conscious 
all the while of the narrow, low-pitched room, the 
unsuitable entourage of this woman, who looked as 
if born to rule in a palace. He observed, too, a 
smell of burning paper lingering in the air, and sus- 
pected mischief. 

Rose looked at her mistress steadily, pityingly 
even, but returned no reply. 

Mrs. St. George made a gesture of indignant 
anger, then turned fiercely on the man who stood 
there in the narrow way, forcing himself upon her in 
her own chamber. A sudden sense of the public- 
ity in which she must henceforth live, smote on her 
chillily, and she felt that the sanctity of her home 
was gone, and privacy for her no longer existed. 

“ If any one is to be arrested,” she said curtly, 
“arrest me. If any one in this house is guilty, I am 
that person.” 

“ How did you do it ? ” he said, smoothly and 
raising his voice a little ; “ do you always carry fire- 
arms ? ” 

She had set her face as a flint, but she could not 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


25 


keep the look out of her eyes that told him what he 
wanted to know. He caught also an expression in 
Rose’s face that he stored up for future unravelling. 

“ Mrs. St. George did not do it,” he said to him- 
self, “but her maid knows something about it. 
Then there is the skylight.” Aloud he said, and 
producing an envelope from his pocket : 

“ Mr. Ross received a letter from you last night ? ” 
“ He did.” 

“ It was delivered by one of your servants ? ” 

“ By my maid.” 

“ Mr. Ross was not in, ma’am,” said Rose, “ and 
I placed the letter on his dressing-table.” 

“ Where he found it at midnight — or later,” said 
the detective to himself. 

“ Mr. Ross was a friend of yours ? ” he said. 

“ He was,” she said, coldly ; “ but is this quite the 
place in which to catechize me ? ” 

“ If you will come down,” he said calmly, “ I will 
ask my questions under more favorable circum- 
stances.” 

But she shrank back, and shook her head deter- 
minedly. 

When you come to take me away to prison, I 
will go down,” she said, “ but not till then.” 

And she made as though she would shut the door 
in his face. 


26 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“ Softly,” he said, not rudely or offensively, and 
indeed his manner had not been wanting in respect 
from the first, “ if you will not come down, then I 
must speak to you here. You corresponded with 
Mr. Barry ? ” 

“ I did.” 

“ Unknown to your husband ? ” 

“ Unknown to my husband.” 

“ I may venture to inquire your subject ? ” 

“ You may not.” 

‘‘Your letter was not of such a character as would 
bring him to your room at night ? ” 

Elizabeth’s eyes blazed — Rose’s were cast down. 

“ What has this to do with your inquiry ? ” she 
said. 

“ Everything. If Mr. Ross obeyed such a 
summons from you, and your husband found him 
there — ” the detective paused significantly. 

Elizabeth’s face blanched, and she seemed hardly 
to breathe. 

“ My husband never set foot in that room after 
he wished me good-night,” she said. 

“ What time did he come up ?” said the detective. 

Elizabeth faltered, trembled. 

“You were asleep,” said the detective in his dan- 
gerously soft, suggestive voice. “ He may have 
sat up reading late ? ” 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


27 


“ No,” she said, boldly, “ he may have thought 
me asleep, but I was not. It struck midnight just 
after he went upstairs.” 

“ Did 3^ou hear your master come upstairs ? ” he 
said suddenly to Rose. 

Rose made no reply. 

“ He came up at twelve, did he not. Rose ? ” cried 
Elizabeth, eagerly. 

j But only Rose’s back answered the question. 

“ Your maid looks as if she had not been in bed 
all night,” said Mr. Skewton. At what hour did 
Mr. Ross usually come in ? ” 

“ At all hours. The latch was always left up for 
him.” 

“ You saw him every day ? ” 

“ Very seldom.” 

“ But he and your husband were on perfectly 
friendly terms ? ” 

“ Perfectly.” 

“ And you also ? ” 

She looked him full in the face, and paused de- 
liberately before she said : 

“ Until last night.” 

The detective put up his hand. 

“ Stop,” he said, “ I am bound to tell you not to 
say anything that will incriminate yourself.” 

‘‘ When you have been trying for the last ten 


28 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. /J. 


minutes to extract every damning circumstance you 
can against me ! ” she said with a curious faint smile. 
“ Listen ” 

Rose came forward and caught at her mistress’s 
arm. 

“Madam,” she said, imploringly, “don’t! It 
isn’t true — don’t say it ! Somebody may have come 
after the sapphires.” 

“ What sapphires ? ” said the detective, quickly. 

“ They have nothing to do with it,” said Elizabeth, 
“ no one knows where I keep them, often I don’t 
know myself. I hide them here, there, and every- 
where.” 

“ Then you always feared being robbed ? ” said 
the detective, his pulses quickened by this new ele- 
ment in the case. 

Mrs. St. George looked indifferent. 

“ What was their value ? ” he said. 

“ About five thousand pounds.” 

“ And you kept such valuable things lying about 
— here, there, everywhere ? ” 

“ There were only two stones,” she said, indiffer- 
ently. 

“ Two ! They must have been very large to be 
of that value.” 

“ They were,” she said, carelessly, “ so large that 
very few people thought they were real.” 


THB MYSTEkV OP m. /J. 


29 


The detective glanced at the ill-proportioned 
room, a servant’s room, however, beautifully fur- 
nished and kept, and his eyes expressed the aston- 
ishment he felt. With such jewels as those, how 
came she to give up the best rooms in the house for 
a paltry hundred or two a year ? 

“ Where were they last night ? ” he said. 

“ Here,” said Elizabeth, thrusting her hand into 
the pocket of her dressing-gown. As she did so. 
Rose turned her back, busying herself with tidying 
the room. 

An ejaculation of amazement from the detective 
made her turn. She drew nearer, and a frightful 
change came over her face as she saw lying on her 
mistress’s palm two glorious sapphires of enormous 
size, and in color the intensest, darkest, vividest, blue. 

A low moan escaped her lips, instantly stifled, but 
as she turned aside to hide her face, Mr. Skewton 
caught a glimpse of it — a glimpse that told him 
much. 

“ Matchless,” said the detective, “ and you keep 
them rolled up in a twist of tissue-paper ? ” as she 
carelessly put them back in her shallow pocket. 
And for a moment he mused over the recklessness 
of women. 

Rose Dupont had moved away, and was folding 
up, and putting straight the things lying about. 


30 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

“ Why did you not keep your sapphires in a 
safe ?” he said to Mrs. St. George. 

She looked at him, disdaining to answer, then 
said : 

“ Have you arrested my husband, and on what 
evidence ? ” 

“ Strictly speaking, he is not under arrest, but he 
is watched, and could not escape if he tried. The 
evidence,” he touched his breast-pocket, “ is here.” 

Elizabeth turned to that livid whiteness which be- 
trayed mortal agony and fear. She tried to speak, 
but uttered only a hoarse sound that died in her 
throat ; then, before he guessed her intention, with 
the delicacy of touch and lightning swiftness of a 
practised thief, she had dived for and snatched the 
pistol out of his breast-pocket, and put it behind her 
back. 

It had been a moment’s thought, an instant’s 
work, not even knowing what she would find in the 
pocket he had so significantly touched ; but the un- 
expected touch of the cold steel chilled her blood, 
and she trembled visibly as she stepped back. 

Skewton, staggered for the moment, looked be- 
yond Elizabeth to the maid. She stood like one 
petrified, and staring down at the toy weapon 
held behind her mistress’s back. 

“ She never saw it before,” he thought ; then 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


31 


aloud, “This is child’s play, Mrs. St. George. No 
matter in whose hands that pistol is — your husband 
has confessed it to be his.” 

“My husband’s ? ” she cried out as one pierced to 
the quick with pain, “ that cannot be.” She paused, 
and cold beads of sweat came out on her white brow. 
“ He could only have seen it, and picked it up ” 
(she spoke haltingly, finding words with difficulty 
as she went on), “ after — ” she drew a deep breath 
and stood defiantly erect. “ I shot Barry Ross with 
it ! Peace, I say ! He came to my room last night 
— he always carried firearms — and I — I — snatched 
this from him, and shot him, the hound, as he de- 
served ! ” 

“ How came he with your husband’s pistol ?” said 
Mr. Skewton, quietly. 

“ Mr. St. George lent it him,” said Elizabeth, 
boldly. 

“ No !” said Jack’s voice behind them, “you are 
telling a lie, Elizabeth, a lie to save me. But this 
man will not believe you. He took the pistol from 
my possession, in which it had been ever since I 
fired that shot, and which your deafness prevented 
you from hearing.” 

“ Am I so deaf ? ” cried Elizabeth, swiftly, and 
turning to the detective, “ have I not heard every 
word you said ? Does any one in his senses suppose 


32 


Tm MYSTBRy OB NO. ij. 


that I, who sleep so lightly, could sleep through 
such a tragedy as that ? ” 

She turned from the man, and fell down on her 
knees beside her husband, clasping his cold hand 
and bowing her head down on it, clinging to him 
for dear love, and with a passion that shook her 
like a reed. 

“Jack !” she said, “ Jack, you know I did it ! I 
was mad with rage at seeing him there, and I 
snatched the pistol from his hand — and I shot him 
— and after that I remember nothing — nothing.” 

He did not stir or speak, only the coldness of his 
hand chilled her— how could she know that he was 
thinking of Guinevere in her shame, as she bowed 
before Arthur, only Guinevere did not lie — she 
owned her fault. 

“ You are mad,” he said at last, “ to perjure your- 
self thus. No one will believe you, and there is 
Daffy. He loves you better than he loves me, and 
you have him to consider, as well as yourself.” 

He unlatched his hand, not roughly, but inexor- 
ably from her two clinging ones, and, deprived of his 
support, she sank down, the glory of her hair falling 
over his feet, and hiding her face. 

What did his anguished eyes say as they looked 
down upon her ? Does not the godhead in the man 
forgive, while the man himself in flesh and blood re- 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ, 33 

volts at the thing that has shamed and betrayed 
him ? 

Suddenly he turned and went out. 

Rose stood looking down on the young figure that 
stirred no more than the dead, looked with eyes in 
which anger, amazement, and bitter disappointment 
struggled with some softer feeling that by and by 
drove out the rest, and brought her to her knees by 
Mrs. St. George’s side. 

“ Madam,” she said, gently, “madam,” and tried 
to raise her in her arms. 

But with a gesture of passion Elizabeth thrust 
her away, grown strong with the anger that filled 
her breast. 

“You wicked woman!” she said. “ Would you 
hang your master ? ” 

Rose got on to her feet. 

“ Madam,” she said, very quietly, “ master has 
confessed, and that man evidently found the pistol 
in his possession. My testimony cannot possibly 
affect him one way or the other.” 

“ He is innocent, I tell you,” said Elizabeth, stub- 
bornly, stupidly, like a child who in sheer reckless- 
ness persists in a palpable untruth. “ He knew 
nothing of what went on downstairs last night — 

nothing until he was roused this morning.” 

3 


34 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


Rose looked straight before her, her face divested 
of every particle of expression. 

“ Is it not so ? ” cried Elizabeth, seizing the 
woman’s arm, and shaking it. 

“ Madam,” said Rose, with a look of pity, “ it 
was done in a moment of madness — of jealousy.” 

Elizabeth dropped the woman’s arm, with a cry 
of loathing. 

“ Are you all mad together ? ” she cried. “ I tell 
you it was I — I who killed him ; but you will not 
believe me because you have, or had, some affection 
for me! ’’ 

“ No,” said Rose, calmly, “ you did not do it ; you 
were asleep. Mo?i Dieu ! It is a piteous thing that 
you should be deaf, and wake to such a horror 1 ” 

“ Piteous for my husband, you mean,” said Eliza- 
beth, hardily. “You think it was unnatural that I 
should sleep after I had done it ? Oh, no I criminals 
are the soundest sleepers in the world. But if I had 
been wise I should have dragged him downstairs, 
and pushed him out into the street ” — .she laughed 
in a way that chilled Rose’s blood — ** and put the 
pistol in his hand, and people would have said — 
have said ” 

She broke off suddenly in her speech, looking 
wildly around, as if she found her surroundings 
totally strange, and altogether puzzling to her. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 


35 


Then she burst out singing : 

“ His hounds they lie down at his feet, 

So will they their master keep.” 

She paused a moment, then her sweet voice went 
on : 

“ She got him up, upon her back. 

And carried him to Carthen Lake.” 

Another pause. 

“ She buried him before the prime ; 

She was dead herself ere even-song time.” 

Once again she began to laugh, but God in His 
mercy changed her laughter to tears, and so saved 
her reason. 


CHAPTER IV. 


“ O, hear ye nae, frae ’mid the loch, 

Arise a deidly grane ? 

Sae even does the spirit warn, 

When we sune death maun mane ! ” 

The usual ghastly formalities that succeed a deed 
of violence were over. The preliminary inquiry 
before a magistrate had been held, and the strange 
spectacle of a husband and wife, each circumstan- 
tially owning to the sole committal of the same 
crime, had been witnessed, with the result that the 
woman was plainly proved to be lying, while the 
man’s confession was borne out by solid facts. 

Who shall decide the degree of guilt involved in 
that truth-murder, which has for its object the sav- 
ing of another person’s life? Certainly not the 
man for whom Elizabeth lifted up her pale face, and 
lied as if there were no God above, no judgment of 
man below, to punish her. 

Jack heard her voice, indeed (all its sweet quality 
gone and hardened unto brass), but dared not look 
at her. This was not his Elizabeth, his deaf, be- 
loved, little -Elizabeth, with whose name purity and 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 37 

goodness were synonymous terms ; this was some 
unknown creature who had leaped to life in a 
single night, and that he knew not how to reckon 
with or to imagine. 

So he kept his sunken eyes from her as she ranged 
from positive assertion to frenzied entreaty, and 
passionate arraignment of the powers who would 
not hearken to her, who scorned her word, ignored 
her cries, and finally swept her to one side, as men, 
intent upon the stern press of a man’s work, will 
ever thrust woman, powerless thing at best, for 
much good or evil. 

So Jack went to prison, fully committed for trial, 
and Elizabeth, raging at her helplessness, went 
home, with never a look or a word from Jack, to 
help her to bear her miserable lot. 

In those days she thanked God that her few rel- 
atives were out of England, and that there were 
none to come and croak their dismal tale over her, 
and abuse her for the disgrace that had come upon 
her name. 

For the world counted her a vile woman, and 
reckoned her, if not actually guilty of the murder, 
as the direct cause of it, and the friends who stood 
up for her in public were few indeed. 

Do we not all know of cases in which a person 
may be so entangled in the web of circumstance, so 


38 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. ' 


completely the sport of malicious accident and ill- 
luck that he is made to appear a guilty wretch, be- 
yond the possibility of rehabilitation ? He is inno- 
cent, but circumstances, apparently of the devil’s 
making, are against him and he cannot explain, so 
he is branded for all time with a sin he has not 
committed, and another example of the way in 
which Providence invariably drops down on the 
wrong man is signally afforded. 

But such an occasion brings a blessing with it in 
disguise. It weeds a man’s friends from his mere 
acquaintance with startling despatch and complete- 
ness, and he may live to be thankful for the mis- 
fortune that so effectually winnowed the corn from 
the chaff. 

Thus Elizabeth, a target to the world’s scorn, in 
itself so much more secretly infamous than her most 
advertised wickedness could ever be, was profoundly 
touched to find that a few women, who knew her 
life and her, refused to believe that she was anything 
but what they had always found her. Such faith- 
fulness was very sweet to her, and the friends who 
stood by her then she loved and valued to her life’s 
end, and those who passed her by on the other side 
earned a sovereign contempt that wiped them out 
of her memory as if they had never been. And 
verily, do we not choose our friend for evil as 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


39 


for good ? No wrong-doing, or seeming of wrong- 
doing, should have power to loose the bond between 
us, and we should remember, even as God remem- 
bereth, that we are but dust. 

“ We will not be crushed — we will ride it out 
together, my heart and I,” said Elizabeth, as in the 
loneliness of the house she stood erect, making up 
her mind what she should do, now that Jack was 
actually in prison. 

And first she packed for him all that he could 
require — linen, clothes, books, wine — every sort of 
comfort that could make his quarters less grim, and 
when these were despatched she wrote a letter to a 
Bond Street jeweller, and within half an hour had 
received a reply in person. 

The interview with Mr. Ezekiel did not last a 
quarter of an hour, but when he departed the 
sapphires (now in safe keeping at the Bank) had 
changed hands, and Elizabeth’s sacred promise to 
Uncle Jasper was irrevocably broken. 

But she was some thousands the richer, and able 
to procure the very first advocate in town for Jack’s 
defence. 

She had already made up her mind who that per- 
son should be. If she failed, and despair filled her at 
the thought. Jack might as well plead guilty, and be 
sentenced without the formality of a trial at all, for 


40 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

Mr. Lemaire was probably the only man living who 
knew how to build up a defence out of nothing at 
all. 

There is an expression, well known to perfectly 
appointed women, signifying “ to dress as you go,” 
and Mr. Lemaire usually constructed his defence as 
he went, gathering material from a witness’s deport- 
ment, or a chance word or slip, and suggesting so 
much that his victim never intended, that often, 
when he began with no material at all, he acquired 
a great deal before the end was reached. 

He might almost be said to possess the gift of 
divination when cross-examining the opposing wit- 
nesses, and even when he lost, as sometimes hap- 
pened, lost with a verve and dash that made his 
failure how uncommonly like success. 

Immediately after her interview with Mr. Ezekiel 
she drove into the City to see Mr. Latreille, reputed 
to be the sharpest solicitor in London, in criminal 
cases, and to him she entrusted her husband’s de- 
fence, handing him a check for ;^i,ooo, and telling 
him to spare no expense. 

He was so fortunate as to retain Mr. Lemaire, and 
subsequently employed days in seeing witnesses, 
sifting evidence, and making inquiries. He saw Mr. 
Skewton more than once, then went to Jack, and 
heard what he had to say. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 4 1 

It was perfectly simple and to the point, and the 
evidence against him was equally lucid. 

“ My wife means well,” said Jack with stubborn 
lips, “ but it is lost labor — and money. I intend to 
plead guilty.” 

Mr. Latreille’s powers did not avail him here. 
He honestly believed Jack guilty, and saw not the 
smallest prospect of saving him. 

He went straight to Elizabeth on leaving Jack, 
to tell her so. 

A figure slim as a school-girl’s, and the bluest, 
saddest eyes he had ever seen, greeted him ; but 
perhaps what afterward astonished him most was, 
that having forgotten her deafness, and addressed 
her in his usual voice, she responded to every word 
he said. 

“ Your husband means to plead guilty,” he said, 
when they were seated opposite each other, “ and 
if he does, there is nothing more to be done.” 

“ If he pleads guilty, you will say that he is in- 
sane,” she said boldly, “ and it is the truth, he was 
insane when he accused himself to save me.” 

Mr. Latreille looked at her with eyes that seemed 
to read her very soul. 

‘‘ There must be truth between us,” he said, “ or I 
can do nothing. You did not kill Mr. Roes, and 
your husband did.” 


42 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


Elizabeth’s face hardened. 

“ It is for you to prove that he did not,” she said. 

“ Tell me,” he said, changing his tone suddenly, 
“ what servants had you at the time ? ” 

“ Rose, the woman who opened the door to you, 
and two other women, both ignorant and stupid, who 
rushed out of the house the day after the murder.” 

“ This woman Rose,” he dropped his voice, “ she 
has been with you some years ? ” 

“ Several.” 

“ She has your confidence ? ” 

Elizabeth was silent. 

“ You are angry with her on account of the evi- 
dence she gave at the inquiry before the magistrate ?” 

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. 

“ Yes.” 

But she gave it reluctantly. You would not 
have had her perjure herself ?” 

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed again. 

“ Yes — for him.” 

Mr. Latreille looked at her keenly. 

Fierce as a tigress in defending her lord, he 
thought, but if so fond of him, why ]^r. Ross ? 

“ Yet you have not turned her away ? ” he said. 

‘‘ No, that would be unjust,” said Elizabeth, 
coldly. “ No doubt she felt it her duty to tell 
what she dreamt, supposing it to have really hap- 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 43 

pened. She has been an excellent servant hitherto, 
and devoted to our interests.” 

“ And knowing that you are angry with her”’ said 
Mr. Latreille, slowly, “ she yet elects to stay. That 
tells in her favor.” 

‘‘Yes,” said Elizabeth, “ she must surely have 
some sort of affection or pity for me, or why should 
she remain ? No respectable servant can be induced 
to come here, and it is with difficulty that I have 
obtained a charwoman.” 

“ She has some other reason for staying,” said 
Mr. Latreille to himself ; “ a reason that is close 
by, or I’m much mistaken.” 

Aloud he said : 

“ You confide in her ? ” 

“ No,” said Elizabeth, boldly. 

“ But that letter,” said Mr. Latreille, disliking his 
task very much, “ why did she destroy the letter 
you wrote to Mr. Ross overnight ? ” 

Elizabeth’s face grew haggard as he looked at it. 

“ Did she destroy it ? ” she said. “ I saw her 
burn something, but did not know what. Why 
should she burn the one I wrote to Mr. Ross ? It 
was only a few lines about a business matter.” She 
stopped abruptly, and her color rose. “ I did not 
ask him to come down that night,” she said proudly, 
“ but he came.’* 


44 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


Mr. Latreille moved irritably. 

“ Could she — for of course you are aware she will 
be brought forward as a witness against your hus- 
band ? — betray anything that would have a bearing 

on the case ? ” 

* 

Over Elizabeth’s blue eyes a veil seemed to be 
insensibly drawn. 

“ If she were maliciously disposed, yes,” she said, 
as calmly as if it were a more natural thing to own 
to guilt than innocence. 

“ You are very magnanimous,” said Mr. Latreille, 
starting up ; “ take care you are not taken advan- 
tage of. If you are wise ” (he dropped his voice to 
a whisper) “ you will take advantage of her presence 
here to find out from her all you can as to her friends 
— and her lover. Of course she has one ? ” 

“ She is very reserved,” said Elizabeth, wearily, 
“ but I believe she occasionally walks out with some 
man.” 

» French?” 

“ I imagine so.” 

“ She usually mixes your night draught ? ” said Mr. 
Latreille, carelessly, but his eye was keener than ever. 

“ Sometimes.” 

She mixed one for you that night ?” 

“ No,” said Elizabeth, looking surprised. “ I 
mixed it myself.” 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ, 45 

“ Humph ! ” said Mr. Latreille again, ‘‘ and you 
slept unusually sound ?” 

“ I ” Elizabeth stopped abruptly, and Mr. La- 

treille muttered “ almost caught,” under his breath. 

“ I do not find you deaf at all,” he said suddenly, 
“ and judging by the events of that night I expected 
(pardon me) to find you almost stone deaf.” 

She looked up. 

“ I can always hear cultivated voices,” she said, 
“ and you speak very distinctly. It is the half-edu- 
cated people and servants whom I cannot under- 
stand. My friends sometimes say to me, ‘ Why 
do you talk so much to So-and-so ? ’ I say, ‘ Be- 
cause he has a delicious voice, and I can hear him.’ ” 

“Yet you did not hear the pistol-shot that 
night,” said Mr. Latreille. 

The thick fringes of her eyes fell suddenly, mak- 
ing answer neither negative nor affirmative. 

“ You are too young to live here alone, and in a 
place that has such dreadful associations,” he said, 
looking round the pleasant room as if he expected 
poor Barry Ross’s ghost to be hiding somewhere, 
“ have you no relations to be with you ? ” 

“ No, thank Heaven ! ” said Elizabeth, lifting her 
startlingly blue eyes, two spots of sweetest color in 
the pallor of her small face. 

“ Or friends ? ” 


46 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“ Some — but none to confide in. I have my 
trouble to bear, and I will bear it alone. Here I 
remain till Jack comes home, or 

“ Barry Ross was a good fellow ?” he said abruptly. 

Elizabeth stepped back as if Mr. Latreille had 
struck her. 

“ He was a hound,” she said, with a gesture of 
fiercest loathing and repudiation, “ a traitor and a 
coward, and he deserved what he got, and more — 
and more ! ” 

Her blue eyes blazed, her slight form grew taller, 
she had leaped at a bound from a timid girl to an 
avenging goddess. 

“ Before God ! ” said Mr. Latreille, below his 
breath, “ she is capable of anything — what if she has 
been telling the truth right through, after all ? ” 

The moment of revenge, of fancied annihilation 
passed ; it w'as but a young thing trembling in every 
limb who stood before him with slender hands held 
up to him in prayer. 

“ You will do your best for him ? ” she said. 

“ Yes — I will — but I tell you plainly I have little 
hope of getting him off. All I have to put against 
the overwhelming testimony to his guilt is one 
small scrap of evidence, that may be worth much, 
or nothing at all.” 

If anyone can save him, you will,” said Eliza- 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, /J, 4/ 

beth, trying to still her quivering limbs, “and () ! 
may God bless you if you do.” 

Mr. Latreille took her poor little fluttering hand, 
and held it fast between his two strong ones. 

“ You a bad woman ?” he said, literally thinking 
aloud, “ not a bit of it — a better one never breathed, 
for all your tantrums, and though you can tell a lie) 
and stick to it, too. And I’ll do my best. So he 
won’t see you, eh ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ A pity,” said Mr. Latreille, his side glance tak- 
ing in all the pride and suffering of her face, “ for I 
think ” 

“Tell him,” she said earnestly, “that I have but 
one favor to beg of him, and that I beseech him to 
grant it me — That he will plead ‘Not Guilty.’ 
That if he does so, if not acquitted, he may be 
punished for manslaughter only, and we will wait for 
him. Daffy and I, till he comes back to us — we will 
wait all our lives long if needs be. But if he re- 
fuses this request of mine ” she paused, and in 

her white face Mr. Latreille read her intention. 

“ I will tell him,” he said, below his breath. “ And 
I will come and see you again as soon as I have any- 
thing to tell you.” 

He pressed her hand. There were tears in his 
eyes as he went out. 


CHAPTER V. 


“O I thinkna ye my heart was sair 
As I laid the mool on his yellow hair ? 

O ! thinkna ye my heart was wae 
As I turned about, awa’ to gae ? ’ ' * 

And Barry Ross’s place knew him no more. By 
the side of her dead boy his mother had kneeled 
and cursed his murderers, and when at last she had 
been suffered to take him away, she had buried him 
among his own people ; and the names of Elizabeth 
and her husband were the most horrible of all names 
in her widowed and childless ears. For she believed, 
as did so many -others, that the woman had coquetted 
with her son, had led him on, and then turned upon 
him, and either slain him with her own hand, or by 
force of the situation in which her husband found 
her, had actually constrained him to the crime. 

If this woman were not guilty, why had she not 
come to her, the bereaved mother, as she looked on 
the dead face of her boy, and wept with her over 
him, as for a lost friend whom she had sincerely 
valued ? 

Mrs. Ross had not thought it strange that her son 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 49 

should occupy some rooms in Mr. St. George’s 
house; the two men had been at Eton and at 
Oxford together, and when one had married, and 
the other had remained single, the friendship had 
continued. Looking back, Mrs. Ross remembered 
that Barry had often spoken of Elizabeth, of how 
lovely she was, how good yet how full of fire, and 
how patiently she bore the deafness that had afflicted 
her from earliest youth. But she could recall no 
sign that he loved her, or gave her undue place in his 
thoughts, though she remembered, too, that he spoke 
in praise of no woman save Elizabeth. 

Barry had never been known to do a shady thing 
in his life ; he had been loved everywhere for his 
sunny looks and temper, for his sweetness of nature 
which had never suffered him to sin against anyone 
but himself ; and now he lay in his grave, with a 
dark cloud of dishonor resting over him in the eyes 
of all save his friends, who swore that it was im- 
possible he» should have stolen down in the night 
on so base an errand as was said to be the cause of 
his death. 

There were others — neither friends nor foes — who 
suggested that, when acting on a mad impulse, he 
had descended to the drawing-room, either struck 
with remorse or maddened by Elizabeth’s re- 
proaches, he had turned the pistol against himself ; 

4 


50 ■ THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

but was it possible that after such an occurrence she 
should have slept calmly for many hours ? Merci- 
ful souls said that in very truth she had not wakened 
at all that night, her deafness having placed her in 
the extraordinary position that she might be in the 
midst of a tragedy and know nothing of it, but that 
Jack, happening upon Mr. Ross there, and doubting 
both her and him, had slain his false friend, and 
left him there to silently tell his own tale. 

Others, again, opined that a burglar, tempted by 
the sapphires, might have got in, and, surprised by 
Mr. Ross, had in self-defence shot him ; but were a 
pistol in Barry’s possession, was it not more likely 
that he would have shot the thief ? And the weap- 
on was St. George’s, not Barry’s 

Again, burglars do not as a rule go anywhere with- 
out being pretty sure of their ground, and if they 
had received information from a confederate in the 
house, they would probably not have been surprised 
at all, but departed with the same ease as they had 
entered, and, in any case, most assuredly would have 
taken the sapphires ; while the theory that the room 
had been entered from the skylight in the house 
looking on Mr. St. George’s leads, fell to the ground 
when inquiry only elicited that the house was in- 
habited by an old rheumatic cobbler, who lived alone 
in it, and could only crawl about at a snail’s pace. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 5 I 

His assistant slept in Marylebone Lane, and being 
duly followed there, it was proved that he had come 
home to his lodging as usual, had his tea, retired to 
bed, and comedown at his usual time next morning, 
so that it was impossible he should have been inside 
the cobbler’s house that night. 

Elizabeth herself had never given the sapphire 
theory a thought. If she did not value the stones 
particularly, she sufficiently realized their worth to 
hide them in such a way that no outsider could 
positively know where to look for them, and as to 
the servants in the house, any of them could have 
robbed her at any time. 

Jack simply hated the stones, and had protested 
against her accepting a gift that marked her out as a 
subject for violence, and possibly murder, besides 
being a perpetual source of anxiety to himself. 

But a woman must be an angel who will refuse a 
priceless jewel that exactly suits her eyes and com- 
plexion, and, moreover, make her at once a target 
for the envy and malice of her kind ; for wherever 
Elizabeth went, those two enormous sapphires — so 
enormous that they were seldom believed to be real 
save by those who knew her — riveted every eye 
upon her arm. 

Two conditions had been attached to this gift, 
that she should never let them out of her own per- 


52 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

sonal possession, and that she should never raise 
money upon them or sell them. 

Gayly enough Elizabeth had made the necessary 
promises to her rich godfather (now dead), but long 
ago she had repented her of making either. Gladly 
would she have turned them into money, for Jack’s 
progress at the Bar was slow, and food and house- 
rent were dear, so was society, and life in Town 
meant a perpetual disbursing of small and big coins, 
while the enjoyment purchased by the same was 
disproportionately small. 

But she had given her word, and instead of break- 
ing it, she had hit on a little plan by which she might 
obtain some money, and enjoy the bliss of pouring 
it all one day into Jack’s brown hand, and so she had 
collogued with Barry, and confusion had come of it, 
and despair and death. 

Long before that she had sacrificed her own comfort 
to economy in the house, that she might take a small 
cottage in the country where the fresh air, urgently 
required by a certain precious somebody, could be 
obtained, and so she had airily told Barry they had 
rooms to let, and he had moved into them gladly, 
not knowing the bad accommodation she had re- 
served to herself above. 

To Jack an attic, with Elizabeth in it, was a palace, 
and he bore philosophically what caused her really 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


53 


acute pain ; but she often went down to the cottage 
in Berkshire, as often indeed as her care for Jack 
permitted. 

They had never fallen out of love with each 
other, these two — nobody had come between them 
during the five years of their married life, for theirs 
had been that perfect sympathy of heart and soul 
which makes united lives one long feast of delight- 
ful company. And who would have. dreamed that 
any interruption to their happiness should ever 
come ? 

And now she was alone — and friends and enemies 
alike marvelled that she could remain in that house, 
whose number and story were on every tongue, and 
that no one passed without a curious stare up at its 
pretty windows, as if expecting to see a ghostly 
tragedy enacted. 

She who had once been so sensitive was surely 
not sensitive now, or she must have fled from it long 
ago ; but they did not know that her courage was 
stronger than her sensitiveness, therefore she re- 
mained. 

When Jack came home — ay ! but would he bear 
to put up with her company always, if his prison- 
doors opened, and sent him forth a free man. 

Elizabeth did not break down as some women 
would have done under the awful strain. Some 


54 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


people go down under adversity, others are braced 
up by it. If she had an enormous capacity for 
suffering, she had also a good constitution, and that 
high-mettled courage which rises to the occasion, as 
the thoroughbred horse will respond to the call 
made upon him, even if, in accomplishing it, he 
burst his heart and die. 

So her back grew to its burden, and if she wasted 
day by day, her spirit was yet unbroken and whole 
within her. 

Nervous she was indeed, with that terrible phy- 
sical nervousness known only to the deaf, who never 
grow accustomed to the strangeness of people ap- 
pearing suddenly, without sound, before them, and 
who are weary with the perpetual strain of trying 
to hear indistinct or unsympathetic voices, that irri- 
tate and wound their ears. 

Common people look upon a deaf person as only 
one degree removed from an idiot, and not only roar 
at him, but think it necessary to elaborately explain 
everything down to his limited intelligence; much 
as an Englishman when he is trying to talk French, 
holloas at a Frenchman. 

It had come with such cruel swiftness on Eliza- 
beth, and it had come to remain for ever. A bright, 
eager child, thirsting to be first in her school, over- 
work, a sudden chill, and then — silence to all the 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


55 


sweetest sounds of nature, and the tenderest, most 
delicious notes of the human voice. To sit alone, 
while others laughed, to be the fool of her company 
when most eager to understand, to see life only from 
one narrow stand-point, and hear it not at all with 

“ Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out,” 

this was the life of Elizabeth, and she had borne it, 
yea, and gayly, with love to turn all its broken 
promise to gold ; but now that love was. gone, the 
silence seemed to touch her heart, and she shrank 
farther into her chilly loneliness, as one who could 
never be warm again. 

Did she ever seem to hear poor Barry’s step on 
the stair as she sat alone, listening to inner voices 
and sounds that no other might hear? Did she 
sometimes look up, half-expecting to see him stand- 
ing beside her, pale, with reproach in his eyes, ask- 
ing her if he had ever, through all their years of 
friendship, used her once discourteously ? 

“ O ! my God ! ” she cried once, with a passion 
she rarely showed, “why did I go downstairs that 
night ?” 

And then she had started to find Rose beside 
her. Rose, whose clear voice she could always 
hear, who had studied her comfort and health con- 
tinually, and who, in her own reserved way, seemed 


56 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ, 


sincerely attached to the young mistress who was so 
dependent for consideration on those around her, 
and whom no one could be with long without 
learning to love. 

Elizabeth looked searchingly at the^ woman, as 
she deftly arranged her tea on a small table near. 
Why did she find it a constant struggle now to be 
kind to her ? Was the difference in herself or in 
Rose ? 

The latter did not speak, and something in her 
silence, and her averted head, struck Elizabeth pain- 
fully, and a sense of profound humiliation stung her 
through and through. She was a woman desert- 
ed by her husband, and dependent for sympathy on 
a servant who seemed about to fail her. 

Did anyone of the friends who clung to her 
absolutely believe her innocent ? And was this 
woman, who had lived about her person, and knew 
all her ways, at once sorry for, yet doubtful of her 
too ? 

Whither should she turn in her desertion and 
loneliness ? was she not in as piteous plight as the 
ruined heir of Linne ? 

“ O, see, for he stands on the cauld causay, k 

And nae ane bids him come in I ” 

Ay I but like the broken, weary, friend-forsaken 
youth, she minded her ” of something. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


57 


His mither left him a little wee key 
A little before she de’ed ; 

And bade him keep the little wee key 
Till he was maist in need.” 

And the key fitted the hidden door, in which 
the Lady of Linne had stored away muckle gold 
against the time of her son’s ruin and repentance, 
and so he became rich again, and, let us hope,' 
sinned no more. 

So now Elizabeth, bethinking her of her own se- 
cret treasure, flung aside the self-restraint that she 
had fought so hard to maintain, and with a long, 
sobbing sigh of love and longing, covered her face 
with her hands. 

“ Daffy, . . she said, below her breath, “ I 

want you, my little love, my dear. ... I can’t 
live without you ; . . . and your little feet will 

dance just as happily here as there; . . . and 

you will not know; ... so you must come. 
Daffy, for we are all alone together now, you and 
1 .” 


CHAPTER VI. 


“Below, my boy, I’ll weep for thee ; 

Too soon alake ! thouMt weep for me 1 
Thy griefs are growing to a sum, 

God grant thee patience when they come.” 

“ Where my rocking-’orse ? ” said Daffy, when, 
on his arrival, his mother and he had hugged and 
kissed each other almost out of breath, and paused 
awhile before they began it all over again. 

Tragedy had stalked through the house and swept 
the master of it and his friend away ; but the child, 
finding his mother and his rocking-horse all safe, 
was content. 

She took his little, eager hand and went down- 
stairs with him to the room that was indifferently 
called the housekeeper’s and the day nursery, and 
where Daffy’s toys flourished in great disorder and 
abundance, and sat down in the dingy room, while 
the four-year-old boy rode his horse boldly and fast, 
his golden curls flying, as with voice and whip he 
encouraged his steed to increased effort. 

As she looked at his chubby limbs, the roses on 
his cheeks, and the clearness of his blue eyes, she 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 59 

thought how selfish she was, for her own pleasure, 
to bring him to this house where he never thrived, 
and where, indeed, she was never able to keep him 
for very long. 

Town life did not suit Daffy, and the greater part 
of his time was spent in the country with his nurse, 
Dolly. If Elizabeth had loved Jack less, she would 
have passed mostly her existence there too ; but she 
had never placed the child before his father, and so 
had to endure the misery of being nearly always 
without the company of one or the other. The real 
satisfaction in her life lay in Jack’s holidays. When 
all three went away together she was happy, with 
that intensity which only a brief tenure of happiness 
can bring. 

“ Mother,” said Daffy, pausing in his management 
of his steed to look at her anxiously, “ has ’00 been 
ill?” 

“ No, my sweetheart,” she said, bravely, “ but 
London does not suit mother very well.” 

Come down in the counfy,” said Daffy, nodding, 
“ lot’s o’ cows and pigs, and such dear little chickens ! 
Dolly’s promised to take care of them. Why didn’t 
Dolly come too?” he added, anxiously, ‘‘can’t get 
’long without Dolly ! ” 

“ She is taking care of the cottage,” said Elizabeth, 
“ won’t mother do for your nurse, lovey ?” 


6o THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

“ O, yes ! ” shouted Daffy, scrambling down to 
kiss her fondly; “where my little white mouse?” 
he added suddenly, as if struck by a thought. 

“ Upstairs,” said his mother, “ all safe.” 

“ And you haven't 'tarved him ? ” said Daffy, 
anxiously. 

“ No, dear one. I have seen that he was fed every 
day.” 

And so she had. Through all that had happened 
her child’s one town pet had never been forgotten ; 
and not for a single day had his glass crock been left 
unfilled with bread and milk. 

“ Good mummy,” said the boy, as he climbed into 
her arms and drew her head down to his. 

She closed her eyes that he might not see the 
tears that came into them. With his cheek pressed 
against hers she was in heaven, and would have 
liked to rest thus for ever. 

“ Daddy coming ’ome early ? ” said Daffy, 
squeezing his velvet embrace still closer round her 
neck. 

“ Not to-day, lovey,” she said, her brief spell of joy 
over. “ Daddy is — is away just now.” 

“ Why you not gone too ? ” said Daffy, sitting up, 
and looking earnestly at his mother. 

“He has gone on — on business. Daffy.” 

“ O ! ” said Daffy, only half-satisfied, but anxious. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ. 6 1 

as usual, not to appear ignorant. After pondering 
awhile he said : 

“ Barry gone away too ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Elizabeth, putting up her hand to her 
throat as if something choked her. 

“ He promised me a new rocking-’orse,”said Daffy, 
with grave displeasure. “ Jest like a Shetlun’ pony 
— with a hairy skin and a real tail — does ’oo sink he’s 
forgotten it ? ” 

She bowed her head on his neck to hide her eyes 
' — she could not answer him. 

“ P’r’aps he’ll come ’ome before I go away,” said 
Daffy, cheerfully, “ ’ope so — Barry and me used to 
’ave velly ’igh jinks — that’s what he used to call 
’em — I used to call it fun.” 

She had forgotten how good Barry had used to 
be to her boy ; . . . how they had played, and 

romped together ; how, one night, on going up to 
the nursery, she had found Daffy with his golden 
head on his friend’s shoulder, saying his prayers, 
and Barry listening reverently. 

Something struck against the stony rock of her 
heart then, and pity gushed out, pity for the man to 
whom she had been so merciless, whom she had 
condemned' unheard, knowing the pW^erlessness of 
the mute lips to open and clear him of the charge 
with which he had been dishonored. 


62 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


Soon the little busy feet were stumping upstairs 
again, this time to the drawing-room, where, in a 
hidden corner, known only to himself, Daffy had left 
an “ ingin ” that was inestimably dear to his faith- 
ful heart. 

Elizabeth could not stop him with any show of 
reason ; so she followed him over the threshold of 
the darkened room, yes, evert through the folding- 
doors and right up to the recess, where Daffy fished 
out his battered treasure, and hailed it with rejoic- 
ing. 

But coming away he missed something, and 
paused. 

“ Where is your bed ? ” he said, “ does you ’mem- 
ber, mummy, when us s’eeped down ’ere one night, 
cos you said you couldn’t s’eep upstairs ? How us 
did enjoy ourselves ! ” 

And he hugged himself up together at the mem- 
ory of it. 

“ Dolly says,” he added, shaking his dear little 
fair head, “ you oughtn’t to s’eep down ’ere by your 
lone self — naughty man might get in and hurt you, 
wiz no Daffy ’ere to take care o’ you ! ” 

“ Come and see the white mouse,” she said, and 
led his dancing steps downstairs to the dining- 
room. 

The ‘‘ Pink ’un,” was glad to see his young mas- 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 63 

ter, and did not bite him with his tiny teeth, as he 
usually did Elizabeth when she explored his box 
with her forefinger. For awhile she sat and watched 
the little animal frolicking round Daffy’s small 
person— popping in and out of his frills, and play- 
ing at hide and seek in his curls — having by no 
means that horror of mice shared by most people, 
and simply loving all animals, great and small. 

Then came his dinner — for he had arrived early — 
and then he went to sleep, and Elizabeth watched 
by him, his dimpled hand held fast in hers. 

He would be almost entirely in her care now, for 
she had thought it best for his nurse to remain in 
the country, and Rose had more than enough to do 
already, now that she was maid and parlor- maid 
combined. 

Despair had lately made Elizabeth his prey, but 
the cloud was lifted now, as she looked upon the 
dear little companion all her own, whose happiness 
he entirely made, and who must in future make 
hers. 

In her misery she had hardly dared to think of 
this one priceless treasure remaining to her, and now 
she humbly thanked God for it, and vowed that the 
touch of this little hand should hold her back from 
falling into such hopeless abysses again. 

When Daffy awoke he expressed himself ready to 


64 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ, 


go out for a walk, and when dressed called upon 
Rose to fetch his mother’s hat. 

“ Not to-day, lovey,” she said, “ mother’s tired. 
Rose will go with you.” 

Daffy hung his head, bitterly disappointed. But 
all his little life he had thought of his mother before 
himself, and now he did not urge his own claim, but, 
with a loving air of protection, led her to a sofa, 
where he made her lie down, and having stuffed 
every pillow in the room under her head, and care- 
fully covered her feet with a large antimacassar, and 
softly kissed the tip of her nose, he went away on 
tiptoe with Rose, keeping up an appearance of 
cheerfulness to the last. Elizabeth lay listening to 
the little hushed steps as they went out of the door, 
and in fancy she passed with them up the street. 
Would every one who met him look coldly on the 
child for his mother’s and father’s sake ? Was that 
little golden head to be bowed with shame already, 
for a sin that was not his ? 

But if such glances fell. Daffy did not know it. 
He had not gone far when he stopped, puckering 
. up his nose and brows. “ Got a pain in my shoe,” 
he said, “ take it out for me ! ” 

Rose looked softly round. Only ordinary dawd- 
lers and passers-by were to be seen at the corner 
where they stood — the corner of a street that led at 


THE MYSTERY OE NO, IJ, 


65 


right angles to the house at the back of No. 13. 
“We will go to the shoemaker and have it taken 
out,” she said, and he trotted along, well satisfied, 
beside her, down a small piece of street, across some 
mews, and into a narrow alley, where the few shops 
and tenements were poor and mean. 

Once more she glanced swiftly round, then stopped 
at the door of a cobbler’s shop, and without waiting 
for an answer went in. 

An old man, sitting at his bench, looked up at the 
smart Frenchwoman, and gruffly asked her business. 
A young one, who worked with his back turned to 
them, did not even lift his head. 

“ This little boy’s shoe pinches him,” said Rose, 
“will you see if you can make it more comfort- 
able ? ” 

Daffy’s mother wished to keep him a child as 
long as possible, so he still wore petticoats — white, 
fresh, worked petticoats, that looked out of place in 
the broken chair, upon which the cobbler set him, 
before kneeling down to remove his tiny shoe. 

Rose stood looking carelessly about her, her glance 
presently falling on the dark unkempt head and pro- 
file of the man who worked doggedly on, not even 
taking the trouble to notice the smart bit of French 
prettiness, exquisitely neat and dainty, behind him. 

“ It’s dorn now,” said Daffy, with a sigh of relief, 
5 


66 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


as, after certain punchings and hammerings, the now 
easy shoe was fitted on, and he followed Rose con- 
tentedly enough to the door, to which she had in- 
sensibly drawn the cobbler. 

“Your assistant looks very ill,” she said, as she 
paid the sixpence demanded, “ what ails him ? ” 

“ How do I know ? ” he said, irritably, “ he was 
the best workman I ever had till this murder round 
the corner, and when they came prying here about 
skylights and what not — though no one has used 
that attic these ten years — he seemed to get the affair 
on his nerves, and he has been drinking and play- 
ing the fool ever since. But he is French — as you 
see, and foreigners are a rum lot; ’’with which un- 
gallant speech he disappeared back into the shop. 


CHAPTER VII. 


** She wiled him into ae chamber, 

She wiled him into twa ; 

She wiled him into the third chamber, 

And that was the warst ava.” 

It was curious how often Daffy’s shoe wanted 
mending, and how many sixpences were spent in 
repairs at the cobbler’s round the corner. 

But the old man who sat nose and knees over 
his bench, going doggedly on at work that seemed 
always interminable, and which seldom brought in 
much money, always turned the child over to his 
assistant, and spoke gruffly to him and Rose, hav- 
ing no desire, now he knew their identity, to see 
them there at all. 

He had been angry and offended at what he 
considered the intrusion of the detectives on the 
privacy of his skylight, or rather, on the attic be- 
neath it, and blamed the whole tragic affair as a 
direct injury to himself, and done on purpose to 
annoy him. 

What right had people from the “Yard,” dressed 
up to look like gentlemen, poking about his bits of 


68 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


things, hunting for footprints in the dust (as if he 
were more dusty than other people, indeed), and 
measuring the wall outside to see its depth, and if 
it had any scratches on it, as if, at his time of life, 
he wanted to go climbing up and down it like a 
chimpanzee ? 

And it was an insult too, to ask him if he ever 
went out in the evening to fetch a drop of beer — 
couldn’t a man who had lived forty years in one 
house do as he liked ? Why, it was interfering 
with the liberty of the British subject, and a thing 
by no means to be abided. And as to dragging up 
an old man like him to give evidence at the trial, he 
didn’t mean to go, unless he were carried, and not 
to speak then, if he didn’t choose. 

So when Daffy came in like a sunbeam, bringing 
his prattle and smiles into the dusty place, the cob- 
bler seemed to have put some of his own wax in 
his ears, and neither heard nor saw anything. 

To be sure, Janin’s bench was behind him, and 
that chattering Frenchwoman sometimes dropped 
into her own lingo, which, of course, no one there 
could understand save herself, but the sixpences 
were certain, and he could not afford to turn money 
from the door. And she was a good customer; she 
ordered as many as four pairs of new boots and shoes 
for herself and Daffy, during the month that elapsed 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 69 

between the committal of Jack St. George and the 
day of trial, boots and shoes that were fitted, and 
tried on, or returned and called for, till Daffy began 
to grow pale from the amount of time he spent in 
the stuffy little place. Janin’s sombre eyes, resting 
on him, began to alter their expression strangely, so 
that one day, when he was kneeling down. Daffy 
ventured to put his hand on the- man’s swart head, 
and leave it there. “ It’s very ’ot,” said Daffy, 
shaking his own, and the man, looking up from be- 
neath the little hand, held his breath as if the 
angelic innocence of the blue eyes pierced his heart, 
and let a shaft of daylight into a pool of blackness 
and despair. 

“ It aches, little master,” he said. 

“ Like mother’s,” said the child, with quivering 
lips ; “ she’s always got a drefful pain here ” — he 
pressed his hand down in the centre of Janin’s 
ebony locks, “ and it won’t let her sleep — not 
never.” 

Janin did not stir as he kneeled there, one palm 
pressed on the floor, the other still holding the 
half-fitted shoe on the child’s foot. 

“ And I gets a pain too, sometimes,” said Daffy, 
sorrowfully, ‘'can’t bear to see mother miserbul, 
and Daddy never comes ’ome.” 

The tears rolled down Daffy’s cheeks, and his 


70 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

heart heaved beneath his white worked pelisse as if 
it would burst. 

Janin put up his grimy hand as if he would brush 
the tears away ; then with something like a groan, 
he bowed his head lower over the shoe, and drew it 
on, beginning to fasten its tifty laces with trembling 
hands. 

Rose had looked on, pallid and fierce, during the 
little interlude, and now she said something swiftly 
to him in French, which he seemed neither to hear 
nor heed. 

Meanwhile Daffy, who was a brave little person, 
swallowed his tears, and had quite composed him- 
self when Rose took his hand to lead him away. 

“ Good-by, Janin,” he said, turning to nod his 
golden head as he went out, but Janin had turned 
his back, and made no sign. 

Daffy’s heart ached as he went along, and his 
shoes ached a little too, he thought, and he wished 
it was his mother’s hand he held, and not Rose’s, 
for Rose did not love him — he knew that in the 
core of his heart, though she was kind to him 
enough — and he and “ mother ” used to have such 
gay little walks and talks together ! 

He wondered so much why she never came out 
now — she was not ill in bed, for she could run about 
and play indoors with him, but she always put him 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 7 1 

off with “ To-morrow, perhaps ! ” Only to-morrow 
never became to-day. 

“ You must not talk to that common man, Master 
Daffy,” said Rose, as they went away along the mews 
that began at a few doors’ distance from the cobbler’s. 
Had they turned to the right, it would have brought 
them in less than a minute to the door of No. 13, 
and Daffy objected to this roundabout way of going 
home, and once tried to explain to his mother that 
Rose brought him “ miles an’ miles” out of the way. 
But Elizabeth did not understand, and indeed for 
the first time in his life Daffy found a difficulty in 
engaging her attention. 

For the day of the trial was then near at hand, 
and, so far, Mr. Latreille had discovered nothing to 
loosen the halter that Jack had placed round his 
neck, but the promise had been wrung from him 
that he would not plead “ Guilty.” 

“ If you do,” Mr. Latreille had said plainly, “you 
take three lives — not one.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” said Jack, the blood ebb- 
ing from his heart, and leaving him pale as a corpse. 

Mr. Latreille repeated word for word Elizabeth’s 
message, and filled up her pause according to his 
own impressions. 

“ She would not do it,” exclaimed Jack in horror, 
“ 3he is the gentlest creature—” and then he remem- 


72 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


bered what she had done, and measured possibilities 
by facts. 

“ The gentlest women are invariably the fiercest 
on occasion,” said Mr. Latreille, “ and — she will keep 
her word. So now you know what such mad plead- 
ing means.” 

And Jack did know — he was beginning to know 
of what stuff Elizabeth was made. 

Mr. Latreille’s mind was eased on that score, but 
he felt that though he did his best, that best would 
be bad. 

True he had accumulated certain evidence, and 
had one trump card in his hand ; but he knew w’ell 
enough how serious was the weight of evidence on 
the other side, and Mr. Lemaire, too, reflected, not 
without some acerbity of spirit, that, if he failed, all 
the world would be there to see. 

For was there not a chance that Mrs. St. George 
would appear in court, and try to reassert those 
extravagant self-accusations that were the punish- 
ment she chose to inflict on herself for her unlawful 
loves ? 

She had been clever enough in the device of 
getting her lover actually domiciled under the same 
roof with her (fancy a woman with those jewels 
finding it necessary to take a lodger 1 ) but with all 
her cleverness she had been found out. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


n 


And if she appeared, then there would be a scene, 
and the public loves a scene, and while individually 
humane, collectively gloats over the terror, anguish, 
and guilt of a fellow-human soul. The attitude of 
a mob or crowd toward any hunted thing must 
convince the most hopeful among us how much 
nearer we are in our attributes to the beasts than the 
god, and for one who will stand forth to champion 
the defenceless, there will be a thousand ready and 
willing to stone him down. 

But neither friend nor foe knew what Elizabeth 
intended to do on that day. 

Nor did Mr. Lemaire know what he was going to 
do, either. 


CHAPTER VIIL 


“What sudden change is this,” quoth he, 

“ That I to love must subject be, 

Which never thereto would agree, 

But still did it defy ? ” 

Jack had given up his tense attitude of listening 
for those light steps that never came, which indeed 
he had forbidden to come, but that he had expected 
all the same, with a longing that turned to aching 
as the days went by. 

He had sent Elizabeth a message that he would 
not see. her at any time, that the prison officials 
would not admit her, no matter how loudly and long 
she beat for admission, and she had not beat so much 
as once and softly — and the terrible silence filled 
his ears, and heart, and soul, as he sat there day 
after day, and week after week, alone. 

But Elizabeth was very proud, and once he had 
shut the door against her, no prayer for the reversal 
of his sentence would ever cross her lips. The 
Ayoman who clamors in vain, inflicts on herself a 
double pang, for the loss of self-respect is even more 
bitter than the refusal of what she demands. 


THE MYSTERY OE NO. JJ. 


75 


And Jack could not call her back. In these long 
days of loneliness he was living over again the time 
when he and his little Elizabeth had dwelled to- 
gether in a world out of which every one else was 
shut, save Daffy ; when he was as sure of her love 
and faithfulness as his own ; when his knowledge of 
her goodness (for who could live with, and doubt 
her ?) made him think tenderly of all women for her 
sake, and in the best sense of the word she had made 
his house a home, and shrined him deep in the purest 
heart he had ever known. 

Whatsoever thing is defaced and broken was it 
not clean and whole once ? There must be a begin- 
ning to all moral defilement ; but looking back. Jack 
could find no lightest sign to mark the decadence of 
all things lovely, and of good repute, in Elizabeth. 

He thought of her always now as one thinks of 
somebody dead, for the new woman who had risen 
in her stead was not Elizabeth, and he knew her 
not. 

He wondered if her mother’s love Had gone by 
the board with the rest — yet in the same breath 
hoped that Daffy was taking good care of her. Daffy, 
whose firm conviction it was that she needed a 
great deal of taking care of, and whom he conse- 
quently led over crossings, to his own imminent 
danger, and hers, very often. He was also most 


76 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


particular to explain every thing said by the shop- 
men who served her, and his high, clear, little voice 
often brought some amusement, and a good deal of 
gentle commiseration down on the head of Eliza- 
beth, whose chief misery in her misfortune was the 
constant reminder of it she got whenever she moved 
abroad or saw new faces. Daffy did not know this, 
but he secretly felt himself a much older and more 
experienced person than his mother, and never failed, 
on going out, to tell the servants “ to take care of 
mother,” as if she would be in serious jeopardy un- 
til he came home again. 

But strange and true it was, that the moment 
those little feet came into the house, however far 
away, Elizabeth always felt and knew they were 
there, and she could always hear his voice a long 
way off, though a wall seemed built round her to 
ordinary sounds. 

Night and day Jack thought of these two — his 
only two in the world — and sometimes he won- 
dered if they prayed for him now, . . . they 

did, they must, just as his own lips framed the same 
prayer each night that they had done in the days of 
his happiness. 

One prayer he had added, that on the day of the 
trial he should not look up to behold her face. 
The sight would unman him, and he required all his 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


77 


Strength ; still, if he had been able to endure what 
he had done, his back would grow to the burden of 
the rest. If, indeed she were there, he wondered 
which face she would wear ? — the one that he had 
known and worshipped, or the other, all disfigured 
and branded, as it had been that awful morning, 
with the terrible stamp of — but his thoughts seldom 
got further. 

Often, too, he thought of Barry, the fast friend of 
over twenty years, who had remained his friend 
long after both had outstripped the ephemeral 
friendships that had strewn their paths, and whom 
he had taken into his house as carelessly and se- 
curely as if he were his other self. 

True they had met but seldom. Barry dined each 
night at his club, and their morning hours of going 
out were not the same. It had, moreover, been an 
understood thing that there was to be no running in 
and out of each other’s rooms, and a message was 
always to be sent to know if one could receive the 
other. This rule had always been adhered to, and 
Jack could scarcely have told how it was that such 
meetings had become rarer and more rare — only one 
day, when Elizabeth was sitting working apart, too 
far off to hear their voices, shut in within those 
walls of deafness in which she somewhat sadly dwelt, 
and in whose coldness she must have perished, but 


78 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. 7J. 


for the love that surrounded her, Jack caught a look 
on Barry’s face, quite unconscious, but betraying 
such a hunger of love and devotion as flashed upon 
him an altogether disagreeable and unexpected re- 
velation. 

The look was gone in a moment : the next, 
Barry presented the spectacle of an ordinary young 
man intently watching a young woman in the act 
of threading her needle, threading it, too, as if she 
loved it, as Elizabeth assuredly did. 

Jack had pondered long over the circumstance, 
loth to put into words what he had seen, and sup- 
posing Elizabeth to be perfectly unconscious, he felt 
it impossible to speak to her on the subject. And 
Barry ? He thought he had not known his friend’s 
heart all these years for nothing. Then a few weeks 
had gone by, and suddenly, without the warning of 
a moment, had come the catastrophe. 

He saw before him now that friend’s face, vivid 
in death, and in his ears a desolate voice rang out, 
“ His sun went down while it was yet day.” 

Ay ! but it had not gone down, it had been 
quenched all too soon, as it' rode in mid-heaven, and 
the pity of it would overcome Jack at moments, as 
with all the strength of his soul he would wish his 
friend back, and that one lightning moment of crime 
undone. ' 


THE MYSTERY OF HO. IJ. 


79 


In fancy Barry once more walked beside him, as 
in those constant days of companionship when they, 
and the world, were young, and their hearts were 
fresh as their hopes were high ; when they mapped 
out their lives in glorious fashion, and vowed to 
make themselves known by all manner of brilliant 
deeds, and great thoughts, and now — Barry had died 
before ever attaining to fame, and Jack’s only grand 
achievement (as he thought it) was when he per- 
suaded deaf little Elizabeth to be his wife. 

Would he have loved her so much if Nature had 
extended her cruel stepmother’s touch on the girl’s 
ears to the lines of her face and figure ? I trow 
not. Men will do a great deal for what pleases them, 
but nothing at all for that which pleases them not. 
And deafness is an unbeautiful thing, and needs 
much love and patience in those who have to bear 
with it. 

Poor Elizabeth used to say that deaf people were 
sent into the world to practise patience themselves, 
and discipline others to patience also ; but Jack would 
not have changed her for the most perfect person, 
mentally and physically, in the world. But that 
was then, and this was now. And on the morrow 
his cell would be empty, and he standing in the 
dock. 


CHAPTER IX. 


“ O, gentle Maurice, still my bairn, 

O, still him with the keys ! ” 

“ He winna still, fair lady, 

Let me do what I please.” 

A MESSAGE from Elizabeth to Jack was even now 
outside his door, though he did not know it, and, 
indeed he seemed to come out of a stupor, in which 
he had heard no sound of locks unbarred, to see a 
light figure all in white (save where the gold of his 
hair was shining) come dancing in, and flutter into 
his arms, with an ecstatic cry of “ Daddy ! ” 

Jack thought himself mad at last, but here was no 
visionary touch, only a very real pair of loving arms 
throttling his neck, and soon he realized that this 
was indeed his own little child in the flesh, and 
nestling his head into the soft neck and curls, could 
have wept for the joy and anguish of the moment. 

“ Daddy,” said the boy, “ my own dear daddy, 
won’t you come along *ome with me, and see 
mother ? ” 

Jack did not answer, only pressed his face down 
closer, and smoothed with hungry hand the soft 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 8 1 

head lying so close with lips warm against his 
throat. 

“Poor mother,” said Daffy, with a catch in his 
voice, “ she’s growed quite jinn^ and said she was so 
welly tired she couldn’t jest come out to-day.” 

Jack’s broad chest was heaving, he was struggling 
for the mastery of himself, and when he had got it, 
he unloosed Daffy’s- arms, and put him back so that 
he might kiss him. 

“ How do you like my new house, Daffy ? ” he said. 

“ O — oh ! ” said Daffy, looking round with much 
interest, and speaking in the wise little voice he 
usually affected, when not quite sure that he knew 
his subject, “ there’s lots of room for bat and ball. 
Shall us 'ave a little game. Daddy ? ” 

“ Another time, my boy,” said Jack, steadying his 
voice ; “ but who brought you ? ” 

“ Rose ! She’s outside with such a funny old man 
— got such lots and lots of keys ! I wanted to bring 
the mouse,” he went on ; “he’s so full of tricks, and 
growed such a rediklous person ! ” (He paused to 
laugh indulgently.) “ But mother thought he might 
get out — and she have careded for him so, and fed 
him every day.” 

Daffy himself looked exquisitely cared for, and a 
,very picture of health and happiness as he sat on his 

father’s knee. 

6 


82 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


He had been born healthy, and passed trium- 
phantly through all the lovely gradations of a joyous 
babyhood to the sweet dignity and majesty of four 
years old — the most delicious age, probably (to jiis 
mother), in a child’s young life. 

Jack felt the soft warmth of the dear little boy 
like the blowing of a soft wind on a poor wretch 
scrammed with cold and hunger,- and for awhile he 
only held him fast, saying no word. 

But presently : 

“ Did mother send any message ? ” he said. 

“ O’ course ! ” said Daffy, holding up to his father’s 
gaze a face upon which the very print of Elizabeth 
was set, “ lots and lots of kisses, and thanks with 
cumplements ! ” 

“ Thanks with cumplements ” was Daffy’s invari- 
able formula for extra fervid love. 

“ Daffy,” said Jack, holding the little fellow away 
from him, ‘‘ are you quite sure ? Can you remember 
if it was only one kiss, or heaps and heaps ? ” 

Daffy knitted his soft brows, and put the best part 
of a tiny kid glove in his mouth to assist memory, 
but at last committed himself to the bold assertion 
that his mother had said thousands — not heaps and 
heaps. 

Jack sighed. 

‘T’ve got a message for mother,” he said. ** Will 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ, 83 

you tell her, Daffy — now try and remember it — that 
I read in a paper the other day that some things are 
sold howto make people hear — and I should like her 
to buy some. I’ll write the address down, and put 
it in your bosom, and you’ll be sure and give it her ? ” 

“ O’ course,” said Daffy with an important air. 
“ New ears for poor mother — but she always hears 
me.” 

Jack wrote the address down — just that, and no 
more — and pinned it against the boy’s soft warm 
neck. 

Did he think, as he did it, of how little she would 
care to hear, when he would be deaf to all sound for 
ever ? Of how her life was to go on, while his was 
violently cut in twain before her eyes ? And pos- 
sibly his message came more in cruelty than in love. 

“Were you frightened at coming down to this 
strange place ? ” said Jack, presently. 

“O, no!” cried Daffy, with a burst of glee. “ Me 
dancy down the steps in the City ! ” 

The ignorance of the child, his unconsciousness of 
anything strange in his father’s surroundings, brought 
tears to Jack’s eyes. 

“ And mother,” he said with trembling voice, 
“ does mother play, and have games with Daffy 
now ? ” 

“ Mother tries,” said the boy, the corners of his 


84 


THE MVSTERY of NO. IJ. 


lips falling, “ but she says — mother says she don’t 
Jink she’s quite so young as she used to be.” 

“ Does she ever go out ?” said poor Jack. 

“ Not never ; and it’s welly lonely,’’ went on Daffy, 
shaking his head, ‘‘and Mr. Woss has goneded away ; 
but my dear little white mouse is so pretty — prettier 
nor ever ! ” 

A warning knock came at the door. 

“ ’Spect that’s Rose,” said Daffy, wrinkling up his 
nose expressively ; “ she always ’urries me ; she 
won’t let me talk to Janny.” 

“ Who is Janny ?” said Jack, snatching him up, 
and covering him with kisses, some of which surely 
must find Elizabeth. 

“ He takes the pains out of my shoes,” said Daffy, 
as the door opened a very, very little way, as if a 
kindly hand sought to gently remind him that time 
was up. 

“ I wish,” he added, wistfully, “ he could take 
mother’s pain away too, she says it aches just herej 
and he spread his hand out expansively above his 
smart sash. 

The door opened wider; Jack clasped the boy in 
a last embrace, and set him down. 

“ Tell your mother,” he said, “ your mother ” 

In the distance was heard Rose’s voice softly call- 
ing to the child. 


c 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 85 

A sudden impulse seized Jack ; he strode to the 
door, and there, just behind the gaoler, stood the 
French maid, her face white in the dusk, as she 
cowered away at sight of her master. What did 
that look and attitude mean — of what was she in 
fe^r ? Him ? A poor wretch who might beat his 
own life out against his prison bars, but who had no 
power to harm her or any other now ? 

Your mistress is well. Rose ?” he said. 

‘‘ She is as well, sir, as she can be.” 

He did not remove his eyes from her face. 

“ Time’s up,” said the gaoler, not unkindly, and 
Daffy, recognizing him intuitively as an enemy, clung 
round his father, and hid his face in his knees. 

Did those little tender hands make Jack think of 
those others that he had so remorselessly unbound a 
few short weeks ago ? 

I know not — but when Daffy was borne away, 
sobbing bitterly, by the woman whom Jack felt he 
could no longer trust, with a newly added pang the 
husband realized how utterly alone and friendless his 
little Elizabeth was now. 


CHAPTER X. 


“Work thou within, we’ll work without, 

And I’ll be sworn we’ll set thee free.” 

Jack glanced swiftly round the court and found 
it empty, for Elizabeth was not there. 

Thank God that she was not, that she did not 
hear herself called in open day what all, save her own 
friends, believed her to be ; and though later on she 
would read the newspaper, and her cheeks would 
burn, and her heart be seared by it, at least she 
would not be put to public shame. 

When the counsel for the prosecution stood up. 
Jack as well knew what was coming as if he had 
heard it already rehearsed, and indeed the case was 
so clear, the facts were so few and pitiless, that they 
needed little embroidery, and had none. 

“ It was the old story ” (said the counsel) “ of a 
man trusting his wife and friend, and betrayed by 
both. This poor gentleman — poor in the sense of 
his wrongs, and in that he had not moral courage 
to stand up against the discovery he made— had 
undoubtedly surprised his wife and her lover to- 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


87 


gather, and on becoming aware of his dishonor 
had, in a moment of passion and madness, slain the 
betrayer, slain him, too, in a manner at once cow- 
ardly and indefensible, for Mr. Ross was unarmed. 
The wife, presumably, witnessed the crime, and that 
she held herself immediately responsible for it is 
evidenced by the fact that she afterward persistently 
accused herself of it, and begged to be committed 
for trial and punished instead of her husband. 

“ Yet what astounding nerve she displayed during 
that night ! After such a scene as may be imagined, 
but can hardly be described, she calmly slept — slept 
with the body of her murdered lover at her very feet, 
and to all appearance so dreamlessly, that only the 
entry of her maid next morning awoke her ! The 
prisoner, too, showed a most inhuman callousness, for 
he, too, went to bed after the murder — presumably 
slept. It had been urged that Mrs. St. George 
slumbered throughout the whole tragedy, but was 
it credible that her husband could slay, and leave a 
body there, for her eyes to fall upon when she 
wakened ? Such barbarity was impossible. 

“ But with the point of Mrs. St. George’s ignor- 
ance or knowledge of the events of that night, the 
jury had nothing to do, but simply to consider 
whether the evidence pointed to the prisoner as the 
person who slew Mr. Ross. His own confession. 


88 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

his possession of the pistol, and certain independent 
testimony that would be brought forward, must be 
considered to bring the guilt home to him as 
thoroughly as if the evidence was conclusively posi- 
tive, instead of circumstantial. 

“ It would probably be suggested by the defence 
that a surprised burglar had fired the shot, but as 
Mrs. St. George’s jewels were safe, and as diligent 
inquiry had failed to detect any trace of the house 
being entered on that night from without, that 
theory fell to the ground, and by no possible com- 
bination of circumstances could the prisoner have 
stood in his present position had he not been 
guilty. 

‘‘ This theory, too, was negatived by the wife ; 
her self-accusal making it obvious that she suspect- 
ed no one but her husband ; obvious too, that she 
well knew the motive that inspired the murder, 
and which no other person could possibly have. 

“ It was true that the prisoner had received the 
most terrible provocation a man could have. In his 
own house, betrayed alike by wife and friend, he 
had come unexpectedly on what must madden most 
men, and he had been seized by the terrible tempta- 
tion to kill, and he had yielded to the temptation 
savagely, and to the forgetting of his manliness — 
since Mr. Ross was unarmed.” 


thf: mystery of no, ij. 


89 


Jack bowed his head as if in shame. 

“ Had there been a fight between the two, or the 
prisoner had not used a deadly weapon, the case 
might have been one of manslaughter only. 

‘‘ But so long as human life was invested with 
sacredness, the laws that guarded it must be re- 
spected. That a cowardly crime had in this in- 
stance been committed was clear, and if they were 
satisfied that the prisoner was guilty of it, it would 
be their duty to say so.” 

The peroration was plain to a fault, and the 
creatures who go to hear a cause cdebre as they go 
to a play expressly arranged for their edification, 
had a distinct sense of ill-usage as the counsel for 
the prosecution sat down. 

Why had not that jade, Elizabeth, been set higher 
in the pillory of public scorn, and for a longer 
space ? They would have liked to have her there, 
to gloat over her misery, to scan her face, to count 
each heart-throb of agony, as she gazed upon the 
wreck and desolation she had brought upon this 
poor gentleman who had so sincerely loved her. 

But with the first witness called for the prose- 
cution — Rose Dupont — a curious hush fell on the 
assemblage, for one glance at the prisoner had shown 
how powerfully her presence there affected him. 

Rose — as a witness against him ! The devoted 


90 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 


servant — the woman who would apparently have 
gone through fire and water for her mistress — what 
had she come hither to say ? To speak against 
Elizabeth — to corroborate his wife’s mad story? 
Perhaps Rose had been in her confidence all through, 
and now the woman had come here to betray her. 

He hardly breathed as he looked at the slight, 
graceful, dark-eyed woman, who had that genius 
for dress which belongs to the born Parisian, and 
which will almost cover up the ravages of time or 
suffering and misspent days. She fixed all eyes 
for one breathless moment ; then the women softly 
said ‘‘ Ah ! ” and some of the men muttered, “ What 
a little devil ! ” 

Having been sworn, her examination commenced. 

“ You have been maid to Mrs. St. George some 
years ? ” 

“ Yes.” (She spoke English well, but with a 
French accent.) 

“You remember the night of May the loth ?” 

“ Perfectly.” 

“ Your mistress slept downstairs in the back 
drawing-room on that night ? ” 

“ She did.” 

“Was this an unusual occurrence?” 

“ No. The ceiling of her bedroom was low, and 
she liked plenty of air. Mr. St. George did not ” 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 9 1 

She stopped abruptly, a curious shade passing over 
her face. 

“ Did not ? ” 

She made no reply. 

“ Did Mrs. St. George tell you beforehand when 
she meant to sleep downstairs ? ” 

“ Certainly. I prepared the room for her.” 

At what time on that especial day did she tell 
you to prepare it ? ” 

“ After dinner.” 

“ The prisoner was present ? ” 

“ He was.” 

“You disrobed her as usual, and saw her into 
bed?” 

“ I left my mistress in her dressing-gown in the 
drawing-room, ready for bed.” 

“ You afterward retired to rest yourself ?” 

“ I did.” 

“What happened within your hearing after- 
ward ? ” 

“ I heard the two other servants come upstairs.” 

“ At what time ? ” 

“ About eleven.” 

“You then fell asleep ?” 

“No. I was suffering from toothache.” 

“ Your door was open or shut ? ” 

“ Partly open.” 


92 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“ And you heard ? ” 

Jack leaned forward, scarcely breathing as he 
waited for an answer. 

“ I heard Mr. Ross come up to his rooms.” 

“ At what time ? ” 

“ Between twelve and one.” 

Jack smiled. Rose caught the smile, and threw 
back her head defiantly. 

“ What happened next ?” 

“ I heard him — some time after — go softly down- 
stairs.” 

Jack’s eyes flashed. A burning desire to strangle 
the life out of this mocking she-devil devoured him. 
Who would have thought she had power to corrupt 
Elizabeth ? Yet this thing he believed she had 
done. 

“You had placed a letter from Mrs. St. George 
on his table ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You say you heard Mr. Ross go down. Did 
you hear any loud talking, or a shot fired ? ” 

“ No. My room faces on the street. The second 
drawing-rooms are built out at the back, and I 
could not possibly have heard what was going on.*' 

“ Mr. Ross did not return ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ You were uneasy ? 


THE MYSTERY OF HO. IJ. 


93 


«Yes.” 

“Yet you did not attempt to find out what was 
going on ? ” 

“ No — I was afraid.” 

“ You feared something ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ What happened next ? ” 

“ At two o’clock — for I he^rd the hour strike — 
Mr. St. George came upstairs.” 

Jack smiled again, and an irascible juryman won- 
dered what the young man could find to laugh at in 
this. 

“ And you ? ” 

“ At last I fell asleep.” 

“ And in the morning ? ” ^ 

“ I got up at seven, and went downstairs.” 

“ Mr. Ross’s door was open ? ” 

“Yes. I concluded he had gone out again after 
coming in overnight.” 

“ What next ? ” 

“ I prepared and took up my mistress’s tea.” 

“ Describe what you found.” 

“ I pushed open the folding-doors, and went in. 
The room was rather dark, and only when I was 
quite close to it, I saw — a body.” 

Rose shivered. 

“ You were surprised ? ” 


94 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


Mon DieuJ' burst out the girl with perfect 
naturalness, “ I could have died with terror. Mr, 
Ross was there,” she drew back, and looked down 
as at some frightful sight, “ at my feet — dead ! ” 

“ And Mrs. St. George ? ” 

“ Her eyes were open, she was looking at me.” 

“ What state was she in ? ” 

“ Quite composed.” 

“ You approached her ? ” 

“ Approach the body ? Non., non, I ran away ! 
I called, I shrieked, and they all came running, Mr. 
St. George and the rest.” 

“ How soon did Mr. St. George come ? ” 

“ At once — on the spot. He arrived first of all.” 
** Fully dressed ? ” 

Rose shook her head. She did not remember. 

“ You have carried notes from Mrs. St. George to 
Mr. Ross ? ” 

“ Often.” 

“ And replies from him to her ? ” 

“Often.” 

“ They met occasionally in Mr. St. George’s ab- 
sence ? ” 

“ They did.” 

“ Did he know of these visits ?” 

“ That I cannot say.” 

“ Mr. and Mrs. St. George were on good terms ? ” 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 95 

Perfectly.” 

“Have you ever witnessed any misconduct be- 
tween Mr. Ross and Mrs. St. George ?” 

Rose paused — a pause more damning than any 
speech. 

“ I seldom saw them in each other’s company,” 
she said at last, and refused to say more. Had she 
made the blackest accusations possible she could not 
have produced a more unfavorable impression of 
Elizabeth’s conduct than her silence conveyed. 

“ H’m,” thought Mr. Lemaire, “ likes her mistress 
and hates her master, knows a great deal that she 
won’t tell, and tells a great deal that she don’t 
know.” 

“ You are aware that the letter written to Mr. 
Ross by Mrs. St. George, and received by him on 
his return home that night, was never found ? ” 

“ So I have heard.” 

“ You cannot account for its disappearance ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Did you see her take the letter on her way up- 
stairs after, on the morning the murder was dis- 
covered ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Was she left alone a moment after she came up- 
stairs ? ” 

“ Yes.” 


96 


THJi MY^TEkY OF NO. IJ. 


Obstinate silence rewarded further questions on 
this point. 

“ Mrs. St. George had every confidence in you ?” 

“ I believe so.” 

“ She dtd confide in you ? ” 

“ I never said so.” 

The questions languished after this, and she was 
left practically mistress of the occasion. To shake 
her out of her calm seemed impossible, yet this Mr. 
Lemaire had resolved to do, when he rose in his 
place to cross-examine her. 


CHAPTER XL 


“ But if once the message greet him, 

That his true love doth stay, 

If death should come and meet him. 

Love will find out the way.” 

“ You say you could not sleep that night,” he said, 
sharply, “ were you expecting something to hap- 
pen ? ” 

“ I had toothache.” 

“ Why did you leave your door ajar ? ” 

Rose’s eyes sparkled. Through the thin veil she 
wore one could see her thin nostrils contracting and 
dilating with rage. 

“ That is my business.” 

“ You had no partiality for Mr. Ross yourself?” 

Rose disdained to answer. 

The question was pressed. 

‘‘ Mr. Ross was a gentleman,” she said at last. 

You expected something to happen that night, 
and it did,” said Mr. Lemaire, “was it precisely 
what you did expect ? ” 

He leaned forward with a satirical smile on his 
face that might have maddened a less passionate 

woman than Rose Dupont. 

7 


98 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“You devil I ” she exclaimed, point blank. 

Mr. Lemaire shrugged his shoulders, some women 
in the court tittered, and there was a little pause 
while Rose recovered from her violence, and forced 
herself to mutter an apology. 

“ Upon my soul I shouldn’t wonder if she did it 
herself,” thought Mr. Lemaire. 

“ To resume,” he said smoothly — “ you are quite 
sure that Mr. Ross did not get any farther than the 
drawing-room on the night when— a-hem ! — your 
toothache enabled you to have the full benefit of 
your ears ? ” 

“ I could not say.” (Rose’s breast still rose and 
fell stormily.) “ At that distance I could not hear 
how far he descended, but I should probably have 
heard the street-door shut had he gone out. He 
usually made a good deal of noise.” 

“ Your impression is that he went no farther than 
the drawing-room ? ” 

“ That is my impression.” 

“Did not curiosity impel you to go downstairs 
and see what was taking place ? ” 

“ That would not have been a part of my duty.” 

“ Was it a part of your duty to drug the draught 
your mistress took the last thing that night ? ” 

The Frenchwoman turned livid as a corpse, her 
black eyes glowing like fire. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


99 


“ I ?” she faltered — off her guard at last — “ I — ” 
she tried to speak, could not, then taking her cor- 
sage with both hands, said firmly, “ I mixed no 
draught for my mistress. I put the things ready as 
usual on a little table, and left them there.” 

Jack was listening with the most intense eager- 
ness, his hand clutching the rail before him. 

Had Elizabeth been drugged that night ? Had 
he been all along under the influence of a horrible 
mistake ? And was she indeed inhumanly wronged, 
not only in appearance but by his thoughts ? 

“ Was Mrs. St. George addicted to chloral ? ” 

Mr. Lemaire put the question in his gentlest, 
therefore most dangerous manner. 

Rose was silent. 

It was on Jack’s lips to shout out “ No ! No ! 
but he restrained himself. 

“ You knew the sapphires were in the pocket of 
her dressing-gown ? ” 

“ No,” said Rose, with stubborn lips, “ Mrs. St. 
George hid them in all sorts of places, but never 
told me where. I have known other ladies do the 
same with their jewels, because they objected to 
having a safe put up.” 

A juryman here remarked that he thought such 
carelessness criminal, and a direct encouragement to 
burglaries. 


100 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ, 


“You never spoke to your lover — the young 
Frenchman with whom you walked out — of the sap- 
phires ?” said Mr. Lemaire, amiably. 

Rose looked at him calmly. She had herself well 
in hand now, and was prepared for the worst. 

“What we talked about was* no business of 
yours,” she said, coolly. 

“ But it may have been that of your mistress,” he 
said, “ and your master,” he added, looking at Jack, 
upon whose face a new light had broken, turning it 
to joy. 

Life had changed its mien for him during the 
space of the last minute, and from the abysses of 
despair he passed at a bound to the buoyancy of 
hope, and covering his face with his hands, he trem- 
bled like a reed. 

Guilt was stamped on Rose’s face, stamped there 
in letters that all her fierce control of feature could 
not hide ; but she bore herself erect, and had evi- 
dently plenty of fight left in her yet. 

“ You spend a great deal of time at the cobbler’s, 
the back of whose house overlooks No. 13, do you 
not?” said Mr. Lemaire. 

“ I go there occasionally to get Master Daffy’s shoes 
mended, and buy him new ones,” said Rose, hardily. 

“ You are aware that there is a skylight in the 
cobbler’s house, from which a person might easily 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


lOI 


drop on to the leads that are level with the room in 
which Mrs. St. George slept that night ? ” 

“ So I heard afterward. To me the roof looked 
all slates, like your English roofs — and I saw no win- 
dow.” 

“You are an old acquaintance of the young 
Frenchman who has assisted the cobbler in his work 
only so far back as a few months, and ” 

“ Mon Dieu ! non / ” said Rose, raising expressive 
brows, “ this young man is common — very common 
— and he seems not to be French, he speaks English 
always.” 

“ Almost as well as yourself ?” said Mr. Lemaire, 
dryly. “ How does he call himself ?” 

Rose’s eyes narrowed. 

“ How should I know ? ” she said. 

The solicitor’s inquiries had not been able to es- 
tablish the identity between the Frenchman with 
whom she had kept company and the man who was 
the cobbler’s assistant, but Mr. Lemaire meant to 
assume it all the same. 

“You have known Janin Pierrot many years?” 
he said. 

The shot told, and for a moment she looked as if 
she were about to fall. 

“ I know no Janin Pierrot,” she said, with shak- 
ing lips. 


102 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“ I fear you have a treacherous memory,’’ said Mr. 
Lemaire, smiling, as with a gesture he released her 
and resumed his seat. 

Worsted, not broken, savage as a wild-cat that 
knows itself trapped, and expects worse things. 
Rose left the witness-box, and for a while disap- 
peared. 

Astonishment at the new turn things had taken 
was now growing apace, but Mr. Skewton’s appear- 
ance on the scene heralded a volte-face that speedily 
caused the readjustment of a good many newly ac- 
quired ideas, and blew the theory expounded by 
Mr. Lemaire into thin air. 

Mr. Skewton described how he had proceeded 
straight to the room where Mr. Ross had been shot, 
the body having already been removed to his own 
chamber. 

He deposed to the prisoner’s excessive agitation, 
to the pistol which he was concealing in his breast- 
pocket, and which he (Mr. Skewton) took from him ; 
to his voluntary confession of the murder, how it 
happened, and in fact all save the motive that evi- 
dently prompted it. 

He further related how, in Mr. Ross’s room, partly 
disordered, as if in the act of undressing he had sud- 
denly gone downstairs, he had found an envelope on 
the toilette-table addressed to that gentleman ; how 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 103 

he had taken it down to the prisoner, who recognized 
it as his wife’s handwriting ; of what a terrible effect 
was produced upon him by the sight of it, and of 
how valuable a link in the chain of evidence he con- 
sidered that scrap of writing supplied. 

Being brought to book for this last remark, Mr. 
Skewton imperturbably went on to relate how he 
went up to Mrs. St. George’s room, where he found 
her locked in with her maid ; how presently she 
opened the door to him, and presently accused her- 
self of having killed Mr. Ross ; how, by an incau- 
tious gesture, he had indicated the pistol in his 
pocket ; how she had snatched it from him, and de- 
clared that with it she had committed the crime ; 
how he had treated her words as idle raving, how 
Mr. St. George had come up and forbidden her to 
so perjure herself ; and how she had begged him 
(her husband) to speak to her before he went down ; 
and how her husband had refused. 

Jack’s face was white and drawn as he listened. 
Had she not kneeled to him, his good, his pure, little 
Elizabeth, and had he not spurned her as though she 
were the vilest of God’s creatures ? Could she for- 
give him ? Was her silence indeed the silence of 
outraged love that had turned to hate ? 

Mr. Skewton went on to say that the most dili- 
gent inquiry had failed to discover any trace of 


104 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


any person or burglar entering the house on that 
night. 

True, there was the skylight, but the cobbler who 
lived in the house was above suspicion, or rather, 
physically incapacitated from attempting burglary, 
and he was the only person who had slept in the 
place that night. 

His assistant slept out, and it had been posi- 
tively proved that he did sleep at his lodging that 
night, as he (Mr. Skewton) had made it his busi- 
ness to find out. He had gone straight there 
after work, gone to bed early, had breakfasted there 
next morning, and only got the news of the murder 
when he returned to work. His name was Janin 
Pierrot. 

With regard to the tumbler, which undoubtedly 
contained a sediment of chloral, he had removed it 
without being perfectly sure of what it had contained, 
but it smelt odd, and at that time he had his own 
theory about the murder. 

Mr. Skewton’s evidence produced a profound im- 
pression. However much he had erred in his zeal 
and officiously assisted Jack along his road to the 
gallows, thereby earning for himself the “hammer- 
ing” of the Judge, he had spoken to facts, and 
proved them too ; while as yet Mr. Lemaire had 
nothing substantial with which to support his the- 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 10 $ 

ory. Nevertheless, he was in his best form when he 
jumped up, and said : 

“You suspected the French maid from the begin- 
ning ? ” 

“ I thought she had a hand in the destruction of 
the missing letter.” 

“ You think so still ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ What do you think ?” 

“ That Mrs. St. George obtained possession of it, 
and destroyed it herself.” 

“And your impression that the maid had 
doctored the draught ? ” 

“ At first — yes.” 

“ In order to put her mistress into a sound ileep 
while the sapphires were stolen ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“You did not believe Mr. St. George when he 
accused himself of the murder ? ” 

“ I might not have done, without the confirma- 
tory evidence of the pistol.” 

“ You say you saw he was hiding it in his breast. 
May he not have picked it up from where it had 
been flung by some other person ? ” 

It is possible. But his demeanor was that of a 
guilty person.” 

“ Which you took care to intensify. Does it not 


I06 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

Strike you that you went considerably beyond your 
duty in trying to get him to incriminate himself ?” 

Mr. Skewton was silent. 

“ Even after this convincing evidence of the pris- 
oner’s guilt, you held to your theory that a burglar 
had something to do with the business ? ” 

“ Yes. But after working continuously at the case 
I was reluctantly obliged to dismiss the idea, there 
was absolutely no evidence to support it.” 

“You did not even ascertain that the cobbler’s 
assistant was Rose Dupont’s lover?” 

“ No.” 

“ Then I congratulate Scotland Yard on you,” 
said Mr. Lemaire, contemptuously, as he sat down. 

But jurymen are usually plain men, who do not 
cultivate their imaginations, and who are apt to sift 
even facts to their extremest winnowing-point, so 
that Mr. Lemaire’s cross-examination appeared to 
them in the light of fireworks, that did no harm, if 
but little good. 

Job Trubshoes, the cobbler, was next called, not so 
much as a witness against the prisoner, as to offer 
rebutting testimony to the possibility of any person 
having got from his house into No. 13 that night. 

Pushed into the witness-box against his will, and 
presenting as crabbed an appearance as a human 
being well could, he answered the questions put to 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 10 / 

him slowly and grudgingly at first, but presently got 
angry, and gave out his snarls quicker. 

What he had to say had been largely discounted 
by Mr. Skewton, but he was made to relate in detail 
what hours his apprentice kept, and many other de- 
tails, that made that young man appear an industri- 
ous and harmless creature who would not hurt a fly, 
and who, by no manner of means could have obtained 
entrance to the cobbler’s house, unknown by the 
cobbler, that night. 

But just as the cross old man was congratulating 
himself on his ordeal being over, Mr. Lemaire rose, 
and pounced upon him, like a spider on a fly. 

“ How long has Janin Pierrot been with you ? ” 

“ I don’t rightly remember. It might be a month 
— or two — or six.” 

“ Take care, sir. How many months has he been 
with you ? ” 

» Three.” 

“ You wanted an assistant, and he came to you to 
offer himself ? ” 

“ Ay, he did.” 

“ How came he to know you wanted an assist- 
ant?” 

‘‘ How do I know ? P’r’aps you told him.” 

“ And you took him without recommenda- 
tions ? ” 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


lOS 

“ P’r’aps I did, and p’r’aps I didn’t” 

“ You took him without recommendations?’’ 

Since you’re so pressing, I did.” 

“ He was a good workman ? ” 

“ Good enough for me.” 

“ Did a Frenchwoman call to see him ? ” 

I don’t encourage no petticoats about the place. 
I’m a bacheldore, I am, thank the Lord.” 

She did call ? ” 

“ One called yesterday.” 

“ Was that her first visit ?” 

Women be such figgers nowadays, and dress so 
much alike — how can I tell ? ” 

Mr. Lemaire pressed the point — to his sorrow. 

‘‘ I tell ’ee,” said Job, getting angry, “ I never saw 
the woman — nor did Pierrot for the matter of that — 
till about a fortnight ago, when she came in in a 
hurry to get a shoe eased for a little child she had 
with her. And she never said a word to he, nor he 
to she.” 

Mr. Lemaire swallowed his chagrin bravely. 

You knew she was maid to Mrs. St. George ? ” 

‘‘ No.” 

‘‘ You knew her name ? ” 

“No. Neighbors told me afterward she came 
from No. 13, but her money was as good as anyone 
else’s so I wasn’t going to turn it away.” 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ, 


109 


“ At what time did Pierrot leave off work ? ” 

“ Six o’clock.” 

“ He left at that time the night of the murder ? ” 
“ He did.” 

“ You remained in the house all the evening ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You never once left the house ? ” 

Job Trubshoes hesitated, scowling and mumbling 
his grizzled jaws. 

“ PVaps I did. Fora matter of five minutes. To 
buy my supper beer.” 

“ You left your door unlocked ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Any one might have got in during your absence ? ” 
“ Who wanted to get in ? ” snarled the old man. 
“ Pd got nothing to steal.” 

“ It was dark when you went out ?” 

“ Cat’s twilight.” 

“ Did you visit the attic that night ? ” 

“ No ; it’s a lumber-room. What should I want 
there at night ? ” 

Mr. Lemaire nodded his head several times. 

“ What time did Janin come next morning ?” 

“ Eight o’clock.” 

“ Did he look as usual ? ” 

“ A man don’t change his face with his coat. I 
took no particular notice on him.” 


no 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“Some inquiries were made at your house that 
day ? ” 

“ Yes, a passel of fools who turned the place up- 
side down, and me and Janin inside out. But they 
didn’t get much change out of either on us.” 

“ He has come regularly to work ever since ? ” 

“ Never missed a day.” 

“ Seems cheerful ?” 

“ Shoemaking don’t want cheerfulness, it wants 
skill. Janin stuck to his work, and didn^t trouble 
about women, and murders, and such-like stuff. 
Lor, sir ! ” added the old wretch with a grin, “ you’ve 
found a mare’s nest, and much good may it do ’ee!” 

So departed Job Trubshoes ; but Mr. Lemaire had 
made his point, viz. : that Janin could easily have 
returned to the house unknown to Job, have hidden 
himself in the disused attic and made his way com- 
fortably enough into No. 13. Could — might have 
— but did he ? 

The alibi was very clear. 

And then the court adjourned for luncheon. 


CHAPTER XII. 


" There’s nane may lean on a rotten staff 
But him that risks to get a fa’.” 

Mr. Lem AIRE was in no worse plight than many a 
clever advocate had been before him, viz. : having to 
make bricks without straw, and good, hard convinc- 
ing bricks too, that would stand any amount of scan- 
ning and throwing about. 

Yet, having decided to call no witnesses, as he rose 
after luncheon to reply, he bore so confident a bear- 
ing, and had so easy an air of assurance, that Rose, 
sitting in a remote corner of the court, trembled 
with fear as she looked at him. 

His very first words gave her good cause for terror, 
for he roundly stated, in a very fine and impressive 
manner, that the prisoner in the dock had no busi- 
ness there at all ; for, that if the detectives had not 
blundered and misled justice, another man, and that 
the really guilty one, would be standing there in his 
place. 

“ The name of that man ’’—and here Mr. Lemaire 
paused, and his scathing eyes found out the French- 


1 12 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

woltian where she sat — “ was Janin Pierrot, Rose 
Dupont’s lover, and Rose Dupont’s confederate, the 
man whom she had incited to steal her mistress’s 
jewels, whom she had assisted to get into the house, 
whom’ she had helped to depart, and who had shot 
Mr. Ross when discovered on the premises by that 
gentleman when he returned to the house, after Mr. 
St. George had gone up to bedP 

At this daring indictment, unexpected, startling, 
a bolt out of the blue, all eyes were turned on Jack, 
then on Rose, who, cowering as under a crushing 
physical blow, had crouched down with bowed head 
in her place, every line of her figure a corroboration 
of his words. 

“ That woman,” said Mr. Lemaire, pointing a 
terrible finger at her, “ laid her plans well. She had 
by her the chloral ready to mix with her mistress’s 
night-draught, and had long ago arranged the signal 
by which she was to let her lover know when Mrs. 
St. George was sleeping downstairs, alone and un- 
protected, with the sapphires close at hand ; and, in 
short, everything fell out precisely as she had hoped 
and intended — with one exception — the unexpected 
contingency of Mr. Ross’s return. Mrs. St. George 
duly drank her draught, and went to bed and to 
sleep; a notoriously bad sleeper she slept right 
away from eleven o’clock that night until eight 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. II3 

o’clock next morning ! Mr. St. George in due 
course went upstairs and also retired to rest, not, as 
that woman with the toothache had sworn, after 
Mr. Ross came in, but before. 

“ The coast was now clear, all was prepared for the 
thief, Janin Pierrot, and at the given time he stole 
safely and secretly into the house. Into the house, 
yes, but meanwhile, someone who had not been taken 
into the woman’s reckoning came in with his latch- 
key, and, in the act of undressing, hearing move- 
ments below for which he could not account (prob- 
ably the noise made by the man’s getting through 
the window), descended quickly, and found himself 
face to face with an intruder, who, having come for 
plunder, was betrayed by personal jeopardy and fear 
of consequences into murder. Mr. Ross always 
carried firearms ; in this instance he carried a pistol 
belonging to Mr. St. George, and it was natural 
enough that he should present the weapon he had 
with him at the man he found there under such 
desperate circumstances at such an hour of the 
night. 

“ That man,” went on Mr. Lemaire, still with his 
eyes fixed on Rose’s bowed figure, ‘‘ Janin Pierrot, 
Rose Dupont’s lover, alias the cobbler’s assistant, 
snatched the pistol from Mr. Ross’s hand, shot him 
dead with it, laid him at the very feet of the drugged 
8 


1 14 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

an^l innocent woman, who had been betrayed by the 
maid she had benefited and trusted, and too terri- 
fied to pause and secure the booty for which he had 
come, made his escape. 

“ If the woman upstairs stole down in the night 
and saw the hideous work her greed had wrought, 
she has proved herself of sufficient resource and 
resolution to go up again, and remain quietly there 
till the morning, when the discovery of the night’s 
events would come about naturally and no suspicion 
attach to herself. 

“ So, indeed, things fell out, and we may be sure 
that when her poor mistress woke out of that drugged 
sleep, to find a murdered man only a yard or two 
away, the maid shrieked louder than the mistress, 
and manifested ten times as much surprise and terror. 

“ And here,” Mr. Lemaire turned and looked at 
Jack, “ came in (apart from that poor young man’s 
death) the most tragic, the most unfortunate feature 
of the whole case, and the one that so completely 
played into Rose Dupont’s hands as left her mistress 
of the game. In the first shock of the discovery 
husband and wife mutually suspected each other of 
the crime, the husband thinking the wife had killed 
his friend in defence of her honor, the wife believing 
that Mr. Ross had stolen into her room while she 
was asleep, been discovered there by her husband. 


THE MYST^Y OF NO, IJ. 1 15 

and that in a fit of fury the latter had killed his 
friend, believing in her guilt, and left the dead man 
there to tell his own tale.” 

Mr. Lemaire removed his eyes from Rose, to 
glance at Jack, and thrilled with satisfaction at the 
success of his bold guess, while the eyes of all pres- 
ent, following his, found in Jack’s face a living cor- 
roboration of his counsel’s words. 

Have you ever stood still to watch the mists 
chased from the hill-side by the morning sun ? 

Even so, with its swift on-coming, on-rolling light, 
came the swift illumination of Jack’s mind, and he 
saWy whereas before he had been blind. 

Was it indeed he who had unhesitatingly accept- 
ed Elizabeth’s guilt, who afterward, when he had 
assoiled her of unfaithfulness, had even been thrilled 
by an exultant thought through all his anguish that 
she had loved him enough to become a criminal 
in the defence of her honor ? 

O ! Heavens ! why had he not taken her in his 
arms and heard her story ? Why had he, who 
best knew her goodness, lapsed to such a fatal con- 
clusion, and clung grimly to it like one whom the 
gods wishing to destroy had deprived of wisdom ? 

Suddenly he threw out his hungry hands as if he 
would seize her ; and those who looked at him 
thought he had been long mad, but was now sane. 


I l6 THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 

And many thought of Elizabeth rehabilitated, if all 
Mr. Lemaire said were true. 

Were they pleased, amazed ? Scarcely. The us- 
ual experience is, that when people have made up 
their minds that such and such a thing is, they 
mostly feel disappointed and ill-used to find that 
the flagitious thing is not, and that their pity or 
blame, usually the latter, has been wasted. 

“ Gentlemen,’’ went on Mr. Lemaire impressively, 
“ there could surely be no more piteous and moving 
situation on earth than that of these two persons, 
nobly wrong, and superhumanly foolish, who instead 
of opening their hearts to each other, and immediate- 
ly discovering their guiltlessness, fell into the error 
of believing each other guilty, and in their great love 
strove each to suffer for the wrong that he believed 
his fellow to have committed ! Does no such self- 
sacrifice shine out with an almost Divine light beside 
the foul treachery of yonder woman, who was delib- 
erately betraying the persons whose bread she ate ? 

“Could a more cruel fate be imagined than had 
overtaken this poor lady, who, blameless and secure 
in her husband’s love, and the shelter of her own 
home, afflicted, too, with a sad misfortune that left 
her especially at the mercy of rogues, and which in 
this instance, had actually conspired against her to 
make her appear infamous, found herself suddenly 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. II J 

confronted with a tragedy that might shatter the 
strongest nerves, and branded with a character that 
made her infamous among women ? Her husband 
snatched from her, willing to suffer for her, yet 
refusing to so much as touch her hand, her home 
destroyed, her character ruined — and by whom ? 
Yonder woman, who cared for nothing so long as 
her loutish lover got free, who, aiming first at 
robbery, was not satisfied with having brought about 
om murder, but by perjured evidence sought to 
bring about another — the judicial murder of the 
man who stood in the dock that day ! ” 

And in conclusion, Mr. Lemaire, who had scarce- 
ly suffered his audience to draw breath, with such 
hurricane force had he proceeded, with all the 
eloquence of which he was capable called upon the 
jury to acquit the prisoner, who in thought and in 
deed was innocent. 

Then he sat down, feeling that no matter what 
turn events took, he had done his duty, and that 
his bold guess at the identity of the cobbler’s assist- 
ant with Rose Dupont’s lover, was a stroke of 
genius only equalled by bis improvisation of what 
really took place on the night of Barry Ross’s death, 
and which Rose’s attitude had affirmed to be correct. 

Yet no one knew better than he how brief the 
effect of his tour de force would be. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


“I dreamed a dreary dream last nicht 
God keep us a’ free frae sorrow ! 

I dream’d I pu’d the birk sae green, 
Wi’ my true love on Yarrow.” 


The judge was summing up, and Mr. Lemaire 
was not happy. 

His lordship commenced by saying that “a 
murder is seldom or never committed without a 
motive, and if the prisoner were guilty, the whole 
evidence in this case, with one or two trifling ex- 
ceptions to be dealt with later, pointed to jealousy 
as the immediate cause. 

“ In the highly ingenious and brilliant defence set 
up by the learned counsel, it had been insisted on 
that each of these two persons believed the other 
guilty; but there was not one atom of proof to 
support this theory, in fact there was no tittle of 
positive evidence to support anything he had put 
forward, with the exception of the drugged glass of 
ginger and water, and who was to prove that Mrs. 
St. George did not place the chloral in it herself ? 
Unhappily women, and men too, were only too prone 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. II9 

to purchase rest at the cost of subsequent weakness 
and depression, and Mrs. St. George had evidently- 
suffered from sleeplessness in no unusual degree. 
That she did sleep through the occurrences of that 
night might be taken for granted, and that she had 
no farther hand in the catastrophe than possibly 
the moral responsibility of bringing it about, was 
equally certain. 

“ Her deafness was a most extraordinary feature 
in the case, and a very piteous thing in a most pite- 
ous story. Here were the facts : 

“ Mr. St. George had taken as tenant under his 
own roof a young and attractive man, who by de- 
grees had apparently become on greater terms of in- 
timacy with Mrs. St. George than the husband was 
aware, as, quite independently of the possibly tainted 
evidence of the maid, the detective had described 
how he found an envelope in Mr. Ross’s bedroom, 
evidently torn open during the night, that Mr. St. 
George recognized as his wife’s handwriting, and the 
sight of which most powerfully affected him. The 
letter it had enclosed was gone, and presumably had 
been abstracted by Mrs. St. George or her maid, 
when the two women went upstairs next morning. 
Now what construction could reasonably be placed 
on a letter written by a wife secretly, and by her 
maid secretly conveyed to another man’s rooms, the 


120 


THE MYSTERY OP NO. IJ. 


immediate effect of which was to make him descend 
to the apartment in which she was sleeping? If 
there were no harm in the letter, why had it not 
been left in the envelope on his table ? A mere or- 
dinary note would have told in favor of there being 
no bad blood between the two men, but the disap- 
pearance of the letter argued a desperate determina- 
tion to allow no one to read its contents. Then 
again, the strongest witness against the prisoner was 
his wife — her self-accusal accused him. Humanly 
speaking, her conduct was that of a woman who has 
sinned, who has brought about a tragedy by her sin, 
and who wishes to pay the penalty with her life. 
Why was it that neither of these two persons ever 
thought, as rational people would have done, in the 
first shock and horror of the discovery, that the 
murder had been committed by someone from 
outside, by a foiled burglar, or one of the servants ? 
Neither seems to have even glanced at such a sup- 
position, and the inference is obvious, that one sus- 
pected and the other knew by whose hand Mr. Ross 
had met his death. 

“ His own confession must go for something, sup- 
ported by circumstance as it was. He had said that 
he committed the murder in a violent fit of rage 
and jealousy on seeing his friend enter and go 
straight to the inner room where his wife was. The 


THE AfYSTEEY OF HO. IJ. 12 1 

pistol was found in his possession, his wife believed 
him guilty, and but for the theory about Janin Pier- 
rot, the formality of trial need scarcely have been 
gone through. 

“ If, indeed, as had been affirmed, Janin Pierrot 
obtained an entrance to the house with the inten- 
tion of stealing Mrs. St. George’s sapphires, how 
came he to depart without them, though within 
actual reach of his hand ? 

“ Burglars do not stumble about their work blind- 
fold, they have a pretty accurate knowledge of the 
exact whereabouts of things before they peril their 
lives to steal them, and was it for a moment conceiv- 
able that a man who had nerve enough to commit 
murder, rather than be balked in his design, would 
not find sufficient courage to carry out his intention 
when only a drugged woman and a dead man were 
by to hinder him ? 

Had the sapphires been discovered missing, then 
indeed suspicion might have fallen on some person 
without the house, but nothing was touched or dis- 
turbed, and diligent inquiry had failed to furnish 
one iota of proof against the man whom counsel had 
so boldly denounced. 

“ He had left the cobbler’s house at a certain 
hour, had eaten his evening meal at his lodgings in 
Marylebone Road, had gone to bed at his usual 


122 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 


time, having placed his boots outside his door, had 
risen as usual next morning at seven, and gone to 
his work, continuing to do so with perfect regular- 
ity from that day to this. 

‘‘ If the man were guilty, he would probably have 
run away long ago, unable to bear the strain upon 
him ; that he had not done so was enormously in 
his favor. 

“ Why had not the learned counsel for the defence 
brought him forward as a witness ? The man had been 
watched and tracked everywhere, for weeks, yet evi- 
dently without any result being obtained whatever. 

“ One was forced to conclude that the learned 
counsel’s line of defence had been built mainly on his 
observation of the woman — Rose Dupont’s — atti- 
tude under cross-examination, and that his imagina- 
tion growing by what it fed on, he had been swept 
away by the violence of a suddenly conceived and 
prejudiced opinion. 

“ That the woman had come out badly could not 
be denied; but it should be remembered that she 
was a foreigner, that she found herself in a difficult 
position even to a person who understood our laws 
and ways, that she had been roughly handled, and 
that women show fear in different ways, and that the 
livery of guilt and innocence is, in some instances, 
perilously alike. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 1 23 

“ It was also clear that she was deep in her mis- 
tress’s confidence, and it might be that her desire to 
suppress facts calculated to harm Mrs. St. George 
tended still further to embarrass her, for it was pos- 
sible that she might have a sincere affection for that 
unfortunate lady, though compelled on oath to speak 
against her. 

“ Then the identity of the man with whom it was 
assumed she kept company was by no means 
established with that of Janin Pierrot, though if 
this could be done, no doubt his presence at the 
cobbler’s would, in itself, be a suspicious circum- 
stance. 

“ Gentlemen of the jury,” he said, in conclusion, 
“ you have the case. If you are not sure that you 
have the right man, it becomes your duty to bring 
in a verdict accordingly ; if, on the other hand, you 
find that, in a moment of madness, the accused took 
his friend’s life, you will find him guilty, and in your 
hands, confident that you will exercise your utmost 
judgment and discretion, I now leave the issues of 
the trial.” 

The sun was shining brightly into the court, a 
warm summer wind seemed to blow in through the 
open doors, as the judge abruptly left his seat, and 
the jury, with anxious hearts and faces, retired. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


“ I wad gie a’ my gowd, my bairn, 
Sae wad I a’ my fee, 

For ae blast o’ the wastling wind 
To blaw the reek frae thee ! ” 


Daffy, for the first time in all his little young 
life, had found his mother’s door locked against him, 
and after waiting outside it for a long while, had 
gone down with bursting heart into the kitchen, and 
sought the company of the old lady who, for the 
present, ruled those shades, and dwelled in them 
by night and day. There had been a difficulty in re- 
placing the servants, who had precipitately fled after 
the occurrence in May, but Mrs. Chick, a lone widow 
who usually travelled with a bundle, had shown 
herself loftily indifferent to fears of revenants and 
spirits, indeed, she had a very strong partiality for 
the latter, mixed wjth sugar and hot water, but as she 
seldom indulged the taste till evening, no one but 
Rose was any the wiser, and certainly she herself 
seemed never the worse. 

This lady was preparing the little fellow’s lunch- 
eon when he came in for comfort, for she was kind 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. JJ. 125 

to him, and in the depths of his heart he preferred 
her, black and grimy as she was, to Rose. 

She brought him the kitten to play with, dried 
his eyes on her apron, and made him extravagant 
promises in the way of jam puffs and sweeties, as 
she went on mincing the chicken, and turning out 
the custard-pudding that were to form his dinner. 

Daffy gradually ceased to sob, and sat with the 
kitten in his arms, looking at the strange medley 
of things that an untidy cook gets about her in a 
kitchen, at the shapeless bonnet, the dismal shawl, 
the suspicious little bottles, and that admixture of 
things eatable, and the reverse, that, if seen, would 
take away upstair appetites very speedily. 

He felt almost happy as he sat there, it was all 
so strange and new, for Rose never allowed him to 
come in here, but sat him down to his toys in the 
shabby room on the other side of the passage, when 
mother, poor mother, was too tired to play with him. 

“ Now here’s as nice a lunch as a little gentleman 
could wish to eat,” said Mrs. Chick at last, and tying 
a clean apron over her in such a way as to hide a 
multitude of sins, she washed her face, smoothed 
her hair before a bit of broken glass, and announced 
her intention of going upstairs to lay the cloth. 

“ Mother won’t open the door,” said Daffy, sadly, 
as she went out, and then hjs eyes filled up again. 


126 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ, 


and he sighed — he had got quite into the habit of 
sighing now. 

Mrs. Chick knocked in vain at the dining-room 
door, which was locked, and still as death within. 

For once in Elizabeth’s life Nature refused to 
answer to whip and spur, and she had fallen prone 
before the great agony which swept in relentless 
flood above her, leaving her no power to rise or even 
cry out, but only to passively endure it, knowing 
that beyond lay only the worse apathy of despair. 

Rose had gone to the court, and till the woman 
returned with tidings of either good or evil, life 
itself seemed arrested, and everything void to Eliza- 
beth. Even Daffy had faded out of a consciousness 
that had room for nothing but Jack — Jack. 

More than one person had wished to come and 
stay with her that day, more than one of those 
friends whom she thanked gently enough, but who 
had never stormed the citadel of her confidence, 
never known her inmost heart, for she was essen- 
tially of that order of women who makes of her 
husband her chief and only friend, and in a lesser 
degree her children, so that she keeps the hearth 
warm while the world finds her cold. 

Mrs. Chick felt herself growing anxious as she 
stood there, dead silence within and without the 
shut door. Nothing, as she used to say, was more 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 12 / 

catching than coroner’s inquests in a house, and 
knowing that no message had come to say the trial 
was proceeding favorably, Mrs. St. George had 
perhaps resigned herself to the worst. 

So Mrs. Chick stood in doubt and anxiety for some 
minutes, then thinking of Daffy, went downstairs. 

“ Your ma don’t want her dinner just directly, 
Master Daffy,” she said, briskly, “ so what do you 
say to having it down here at this end of the table, 
all nice and cheerful, with the kitten for company ?” 

Daffy expressed himself delighted with the idea, 
and after begging Mrs. Chick to keep some of the 
chicken very hot for mother, and afterward make 
her an “omblebit,” or something she would like, he 
fed himself and the kitten alternately, almost for- 
getting his woes in the novelty of the situation. 

When he had eaten his custard-pudding, and 
drank some milk and water, he got down out of the 
chair that had been manufactured info a high one 
by sundry bundles and shawls of Mrs. Chick’s, and 
when she went upstairs again, laying many injunc- 
tions on him not to go near the fire, he wandered 
out, the kitten still in his arms, to the door that 
opened on the area, rejoicing in the soft air that 
blew freshly on his face. 

Many interesting and unusual sights beckoned 
him on, and soon he came to the foot of the area 


128 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


steps, and with a fine feeling of independence and 
adventure, began to climb them. 

At the top the gate was open, and he stood there 
with the wind blowing his golden curls about, and 
making a balloon of his white pinafore (a little the 
worse for his adventures in the kitchen), and wish- 
ing that he had somebody to play with. 

Few people were passing, and no one took any 
particular heed of him, but soon he felt more lonely 
still, for the ungrateful kitten suddenly sprang out 
of his arms, and down the steps and out of sight. 

He bent over to look after her, and the steps 
frightened him, they looked so steep and dirty ; he 
wished Mrs. Chick would come up to fetch him 
down — or Janin — the thought of the man put an 
idea into his head, and fast as he could patter, he ran 
down the bit of street, and round the corner. 

He laughed to himself as he went, he thought his 
idea so very clever, and never stopped laughing till 
he had got to the cobbler’s door, through which he 
saw Janin sitting with his back to him hard at work. 

“ Janny,” he screamed at the top of his voice, and 
rushing in, threw his arms round the man’s neck, 
“ me has runneded away, and come to play a little 
bit with you ! ” 

The man laid down his tools, turning a drawn and 
haggard face upon the child’s lovely, eager one. 


THR MYSTliRY OF NO, IJ. 


129 


“ Master Daffy,” he said, stumblingly, “ you might 
have been run over — how could they let you come 
out alone ? ” 

“ Rose is in the city,” said Daffy, promptly, “ Mrs. 
Chick’s upstairs, and mother — mother’s sick,” he 
added, hanging down his head so that his curls fell 
over and hid his face. 

Janin lifted the child with trembling hands, and 
set him on his knee. He saw that Daffy’s heart was 
aching, and felt like lead in his little bosom, and it is 
a mistake to think that a child’s heart cannot break, 
it can, and does — sometimes. 

Janin sat perfectly still, something picking and 
working at his own heart, as if that were breaking too. 

“ Don’t cry,” he said, huskily, and then Daffy 
looked up, and the blue and the brown eyes met. 

“ It’s very miserbul, Janny,” said Daffy, sorrow- 
fully, ‘‘ Daddy’s goneded away, O’ this ever and ever 
so long, and mother says p’r’aps he’ll go away further 
— she don’t quite know how far — and mother, she 
never laughs and plays now ; and Mrs. Chick she 
said to Rose she ’spected,” Daffy’s lips quivered 
convulsively, “they’d take mother away in the black 
box soon ! ” 

“ Mrs. Chick’s a fool,” said Janin, savagely. 

“ Mother must be welly bad,” said Daffy, shak- 
ing his head ; “ she ackshally forgot to feed the Pink 
9 


130 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

un — only fink of that ! You see, I was so very busy, 
I forgoted him too. Dear little feller ! ” 

But there was not the usual lively pride and joy 
in his voice, when speaking of his pet. 

“ Mother never locked the door upon me before,” 
said Daffy, looking up earnestly at Janin, ‘‘ not 
never. I calleded to her through the keyhole, and 
said I was welly lonely, and mother always hears me 
— does you think mother’s dead, Janin ? ” 

“ Master Daffy ! ” cried Janin, starting up sud- 
denly, and setting the child down. 

“ Then me will die too,” said Daffy, with a gleam 
of hope on his sad little face, “mother ’ud want 
somebody to take care of her up there ! You see — 
poor mother’s a little deaf — and she might lose her 
way, if she hadn’t got me I ” 

Janin shivered as he looked down on the drooped 
golden head, and seemed to see the mould being 
heaped above it. 

“ Curse her ! ” he said between his set teeth, and 
Daffy looked up alarmed. 

“ Is you angedy ?” he said, slipping his hand into 
Janin’s ; “ don’t take me ’ome yest yet ! Let’s ’ave a 
little walk in the park ! ” he added, with a sudden 
burst of inspiration. 

“ But you have no hat,” said Janin, who felt indeed 
that horses would not drag him to the door of that 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 131 

house where Elizabeth lay waiting for the message of 
Jack’s life or death. 

“ Tie a handkercher on,” said Daffy, jumping 
down ; “ never wore no ’at in the country ! ” 

Janin got up slowly, and went to a coat that was 
hanging up, drawing from its pocket a very large 
white silk handkerchief, far too fine in texture to 
belong to a shoemaker’s assistant. 

This he tied round the child’s head, and tucked 
the ends into the bosom of his little pinafore, after 
which he put on his coat and hat, and like one in a 
dream, suffered himself to be led out by Daffy, who 
trod on air. 

The mews were deserted ; it was only when they 
got into the street that led to the square, midway 
to the park, that peopled noticed the oddly-matched 
pair, and stared and wondered. 

. But the man evidently meant no harm to the child, 
who clearly rejoiced in his company, chattering nine- 
teen to the dozen ; so they reached the park in 
safety, and presently sat down not far from the Ser- 
pentine to rest. 

The cloudless sky, the warm, brisk, sweet air, the 
sense of liberty, and a vague suspicion that he was 
very naughty affected Daffy to exhilaration; he 
laughed, he rolled on the dry grass, and he talked 
in his own delightful way to his very heart’s content. 


132 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

Thus an hour passed ; then his spirits suddenly 
flagged, and he drew in close to Janin, who had been 
sitting with eyes that looked straight before him, and 
face cold and still as marble. 

When that soft little figure stole under his coat, 
and nestled close to him, mechanically he put his 
arm round it, then a strong shudder ran through him 
from head to foot, and he shook like a reed in the 
grasp of a moral and physical convulsion that terri- 
fied Daffy. 

“ Janny 1 ” he cried, “ Janny ! Is you going to be 
sick too — like poor mother ? ” 

Janin sprang up, the child in his arms, and walked 
swiftly across the grass in the direction of the gate 
opening on Park Lane. People stood aside as he 
came on, stood aside as from an avenging fate, or 
a pitiless power that is bound to fulfil itself for good 
or evil ; and some thought that he looked like Lucin 
fer bearing away an angel on his breast ; others that 
a light — not of hell, but heaven — shone in the steady 
eyes that seemed to look on something afar off, to 
which his winged feet were bearing him. But when 
he had reached the road he stood still, and called to 
the first cabman that he saw. 

Daffy did not understand the instructions given, 
but he stole out from under Janin’s coat, and laughed 
for joy as they drove rapidly away. 


CHAPTER XV. 


“And when will ye come hame again, 

Dear Willie tell to me ? ” 

‘ ‘ When the sun and moon dance on yon green, 
And that will never be.” 


The jury were long absent, and those who waited 
in court had become weary, and ceased to talk. 

Weariest of all was the prisoner, who had not left 
the dock, in which during the past few hours he had 
surely passed through the utmost extremes of de- 
spair and joy possible to a human being. 

Calm, morally and physically capable of bearing 
the lot he had deliberately chosen, he had entered 
the dock that morning, anxious only that the for- 
mality of his trial should be over as quickly as pos- 
sible, and the closing scene of all fixed for an early 
date. 

Long ago he had acquitted Elizabeth in his mind 
of any taint of wrong-doing with his friend ; in the 
silence and meditation of his days and nights she 
had gradually resumed the likeness in which he knew 
her, and for that one mad moment born of fierce 
faithfulness to him^ her husband, in which she had 


134 the mystery of no. ij. 

snatched the pistol from Barry’s hand, and slain him, 
he had altogether forgiven her. 

Such was his attitude when Mr. Lemaire’s cross- 
examination of Rose revealed a probability that had 
never occurred to him, insanely preoccupied as he 
had been with Elizabeth’s guilt. 

Then, indeed, honey-sweet life had smiled to and 
beckoned him ; and drenched with joy, and the 
knowledge of Elizabeth’s innocence, it had seemed 
to him an easy thing to walk out of the dock, free, 
to go to her, on his knees to beg her forgiveness, and 
in her arms to forget this awful interlude that had 
marred the whole and perfect fabric of their love. 

He had listened impatiently as the trial proceeded, 
for were they not keeping him from Elizabeth ? And 
gradually, and with what cruel, relentless coldness, 
the conviction had come home to him, that his folly 
had tied the knot too firmly about his throat for 
the fingers of love to loose it, and that innocent, save 
of his deadly wrong to her, he must die, leaving her 
with a stigma attached to her reputation that his had 
been the hand to affix, and which his death would 
but make the more indelible. 

As that death stole nearer, and life receded, all 
Jack’s lusty strength and manhood (now that the 
cause for self-sacrifice was swept away) cried out in 
him against annihilation, against the parting from 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 1 35 

Elizabeth, from Daffy, from the many good and 
pleasant years they three might have spent hand in 
hand together. 

The sun shone brightly in on the court, the motes 
dancing flippantly on the dusty seats and the people, 
who had grown curiously quiet, all with eyes turned 
to that bowed head in the dock, which had not 
moved a hair-breadth since it first sank down. 

Vaguely they felt — these people who had come to 
see a play — that yonder was no puppet, but a creat- 
ure of human flesh and blood, with ears strained 
for the sound of footsteps that heralded a message 
of life or death. 

They came at last, those steps, and immediately 
the court was thronged. The judge sat down in his 
place, and the prisoner stood up, the crest of his 
dark hair rising above the pale manly face that 
looked out calmly at the strained and breathless 
crowd — knowing the worst, and had Elizabeth been 
there, she would have been proud of her husband 
then. 

The jury having answered to their names, in the 
midst of a dead silence, the question was asked : 

“ Have you agreed upon your verdict ? ” 

“ Guilty — but strongly recommended to mercy.” 

The judge sighed. Mr. Lemaire sat with his 
powerful head bent down, and one arm thrown 


136 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

across a bench, he neither looked up nor moved, but 
his attitude expressed more anger than regret. 

Looking past all the faces. Jack saw only Eliza- 
beth’s as she stood at home waiting for the verdict, 
seemed to see her fall, to hear Daffy’s sobs, and 
then. . . . what miracle was this, or did he 

indeed hear his boy’s voice joyfully shouting out 
“ Daddy! ” at the top of his voice ? 

He clutched the rails before him, and Mr. Le- 
maire started up, and the judge, in act of adjusting 
the black cap, paused and leaned forward to stare 
also, as through the crowded court a man in hodden 
pushed his way, carrying in his arms a rosy, pinafored 
child, who clutched him round the neck with one 
arm, and pointed at his father with the' other, 
laughing for joy, as they came nearer to him, so 
near that by stooping down, Jack could have 
touched them. 

No one had let or hindered the pair since Janin 
had said a few brief words to an usher, words that 
out-ran him and passed from lip to lip, till they 
reached even the judge, who sat frowning and 
perplexed, the black cap forgotten, and awry on his 
head. 

Janin looked up at Jack, then without a word 
lifted up Daffy, who jumped into his father’s arms 
with a shout of joy, and rapturously kissed him. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 1 37 

“ My lord,” said Janin, directly addressing the 
judge, “ it is I who should be standing there — not 
him. I killed Mr, Ross. I knew that Mrs. St. 
George possessed valuable sapphires, and in an 
evil moment, when Rose and I were lamenting that 
we could not marry and go home and settle in our 
own country, she suggested to me that we should 
steal them. Her mistress did not really care for 
the jewels, she said, and her master hated them, 
and there would be no great search made after them. 
If she stole them, she would for certain betray her- 
self, so I must do it, make my escape, dispose of the 
stones abroad, and she would join me later. I was 
in a city office as correspondent, I hated the work — 
and I was willing to do as she proposed. For- 
merly, when young, I was apprenticed to a shoe- 
maker, and when she discovered that any one could 
easily get into Mr. St. George’s house from the 
cobbler’s, she suggested that I should go there as 
apprentice, and as Trubshoes happened to be in 
want of one, I applied for the situation, and got it. 
Mrs. St. George always kept the stones near her, 
Rose said, and in the most unlikely places, and my 
only chance of stealing them without being caught, 
was when she slept downstairs, as she sometimes 
did, and usually at the suggestion of Rose. On 
that particular day, she sent me a note saying she 


138 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

meant Mrs. St. George to sleep downstairs that 
night, that I was to be on the leads by eleven, watch 
the house, and when all was quiet, climb through 
the second drawing-room window, which was easily 
reached from below, take the sapphires out of 
her dressing-gown pocket which would be hang- 
ing beside her on a chair, and then go down the 
front stairs, where Rose would be waiting to let 
me out. The only danger I had to avoid was Mr. 
Ross’s return, but he was going to a ball that 
night, and would probably be very late. I was then 
to go straight home, regaining my room in the same 
way as I had left it. 

‘‘ All fell out as she had planned — with one 
exception. We had not planned murder, yet it 
was done. 

“ I just went back to my lodgings, had tea, and 
put my boots outside the door, as if retiring to bed 
early. 

My room was on the ground floor, overlooking 
a back yard that opened on some mews, and I 
easily got out by the window unobserved, and 
slipped into Trubshoe’s place. I let myself noise- 
lessly on to the leads of Mr. St. George’s dining- 
room, and watched the house. It was a dark night, 
and at eleven o’clock Rose stole out to me through 
the staircase window, to tell me that all was safe, 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


139 


and as soon as I saw Mr. St. George’s light pass up 
the staircase, I could go in. 

“ Soon after eleven, the cook and housemaid went 
upstairs. 

At twelve o’clock I saw, being close now to the 
staircase window, Mr. St. George turn out the gas 
over the drawing-room door, and go upstairs. 

“ I concluded Rose to be downstairs, waiting for 
me, and keeping guard. 

‘‘ After a little while I decided to get into the 
house. • 

“ It was more difficult than I expected, and it must 
have been while I was struggling with those diffi- 
culties that Mr. Ross came in, and passed up the 
stairs without my hearing him. 

In getting through the window at last, I struck 
against a small table or something that fell over with 
a loud crash. The very next moment I heard some- 
one running quickly downstairs, and opening the 
outer door ; so, not knowing where to hide, I turned 
to the recess, where Mrs. St. George lay asleep, and 
tried to pull the folds of her dressing-gown round me 
as I crouched behind the chair. There was very 
little light in the room, but enough to show me the 
folding doors flying open, and a man coming in, in 
his shirt sleeves, who made straight for me, though 
I could see him far better than he could see me. 


140 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


“ ‘ There’s somebody here,’ he said, groping about 
with his arms, as if he didn’t know the place very 
well, and then he came close to the foot of the bed, 
which was a very low one, and stopped short, star- 
ing down at the lady as if he were struck silly, or as 
if wondering how she came to be there. 

“ I saw then that he had a pistol in his hand — a 
mere toy thing — but not knowing how he might use 
it — and sure that he would see me when he took 
his eyes off the lady — I sprang up meaning to snatch 
it out of his hand, and all taken by surprise as he was, 
he pointed it at me, and I struck up his hand, and it 
went off on the instant, and he fell over with his 
head on the foot of the bed — dead.” 

Janin paused, and wiped the sweat from his brow. 

“ Janny’s telling a story,” said Daffy, in an awed 
voice — “ what’s it all about ? ” adding, in the same 
breath : 

“ O ! look at that funny ‘ole man in a cap’ ! ” and 
he pointed his forefinger at the judge. 

“ I picked up the pistol and tossed it away — it fell 
between the bedclothes and the wall, and the poor 
young lady slept soundly on, looking as innocent and 
sweet as an angel, but it didn’t seem* to me strange 
— then, 

“ I never thought of the sapphires; I had clean 
forgotten them. I only wanted to get away from 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 141 

that — and I slipped out of the room and ran down- 
stairs and out of the house so fast that Rose wasn’t 
quick enough to stop me as she came out of the 
dining-room, so she thought I’d got the stones and 
didn’t know anything about the murder till next 
morning. 

“ I went back to my lodging. I kept on at the 
old life. I knew if I ran away I should be suspected, 
and I believed I could hold out till all danger was 
over. But I didn’t reckon on Mr. St. George being 
found guilty, and when Rose, always pestering me 
and blaming me for not having taken the sapphires, 
brought her master’s little child with her, I ” — he 
stopped and something seemed to half choke him — 
“got to love him, God bless him,^and so I’ve come 
here to-day to set his father free. 

“ You’ll kiss me. Master Daffy ? ” he said in a lower 
voice, looking up at the boy ; “ p’r’aps it’ll be for the 
last time,” he added, but Daffy did not hear him. 

When his father held him down to the pale man, 
he clasped Janin’s neck with both hands, kissing 
him with all his heart, his golden curls falling over, 
and half hiding both their faces. “ Going to take 
Daddy home to mother now — come and see you 
t’morrer!” he said, “and we’ll 'ave another little 
game together ! ” 

But Janin knew better. 


CHAPTER XVL 


“ O, she’s down on her bendit knee, 

I wat she’s pale and wearie ; 

O, pardon, pardon, noble king. 

And give me back my dearie ! ” 

Hush ! ” said Jack, as in the dusk he turned the 
latch-key in his own door, and softly let himself and 
Daffy in. 

Daffy had learned his lesson as he came along, and 
now struggled down out of Jack’s arms, beat with 
importunate little hands on the door that had not 
been unlocked all day, while Jack slipped out of 
sight and waited. 

“ Mother ! ” said Daffy at the key-hole, mother ! ” 
and the joy in his voice, some fresh new joy surely, 
brought a gleam of hope to Elizabeth’s miserable 
heart, and stumblingly she rose and unlocked the 
door. 

It was quite dusk now, but the two saw one an- 
other very well, and sprang into each other’s arms. 

‘‘ Where have you been all this while, my sweet- 
heart ? ” she said, quite unaware of his having been 
out, a fact of which Mrs. Chick had not dared to 
inform her. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, IJ. 143 

“ O ! playing ! ” said Daffy, feeling himself to be a 
very deceitful person indeed, and hugging her with 
all his strength. “ Poor mother left all by her lone 
self — hours an’ hours ! Wonder what Daddy ’ud like 
for dinner ?” he added, suddenly forgetting his part. 

“ Daddy will not be home to-night,” she said, with 
a catch in her voice, knowing that if good news 
had been abroad, it would have reached her long 
before this. 

Daffy chuckled, as if enjoying some private joke 
hugely, and kissed her with even more intoxicated 
delight than before, as she turned to kindle a light, 
which showed with cruel distinctness the strained 
eyes, the worn young face, and the slight figure, 
shrunk to a mere nothing, in her black serge gown. 

The shadow outside stole nearer to the door with 
a gesture of passionate pity of longing that merged 
themselves into an ecstacy. 

For did she not love him still ? Would she have 
wasted to this poor ghost for a man who had earned 
only her contempt and hatred, without having the 
power to make her suffer ? 

“ Shouldn’t wonder if Daddy did come ’ome to- 
night,” said Daffy, gravely, “ s’posin’ a little bird 
corned and told me so— what would you say to 
that?'' he added, loudly and triumphantly. 

Elizabeth trembled— she knew how clever Daffy 


144 the mystery of no. /j. 

was, how seldom he made a mistake in his.facts, and 
some faint, delicious glimmering of hope dawned in 
her eyes as, putting him from her, she said : 

“ Rose has come back — she told you something. 
Daffy ? ” 

“ Rose a naughty ’ooman,” said the boy, shaking 
his head ; “heard Janin say so — somfin’ about your 
blue stones — somebody else told me Daddy was 
cornin’ ’ome to-night ! ” 

“ Jack ! Jack ! ” she cried, wildly, deliriously, like 
one long ravened with cold and hunger who is sud- 
denly confronted with warmth and plenty, “ where 
are you. Jack, where?” 

“ Here,” said Jack, coming swiftly in, but only 
just in time, as beneath the mingled rapture and 
agony of the moment she fell senseless to the ground. 

All through the hours of that long day she had 
never once lost consciousness, but wide-eyed and 
vividly alive, she had drunk her bitter cup,''drop by 
drop to the dregs, and now nature took her revenge, 
denying her the power of tasting her joy, while yet 
it was barely at her lips. Jack kissed her pale 
mouth as he laid her down, a mere feather w'eight 
now in his strong arms, and chafed her little hands 
as he kneeled beside her. Daffy looking on, with 
heaving breast, sorely cast down at this sad recep- 
tion of his glorious news. 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 


145 


But soon Elizabeth opened her eyes, and stole an 
arm round Jack’s neck. Why, on that fatal morn- 
ing, had not heart met heart, and eyes met eyes as 
they were meeting now ? 

“Jack,” she said in a whisper, “why have they 
let you come here — to say good-by ? I never 
blamed you, dear — God forgive me ! I admired and 
loved you all the more for it — to be so jealous showed 
how much you loved me — if I had been you, and you 
me, I would have done it myself. . . . are you 

not shocked to see how wicked your little Elizabeth 
has grown ? And because, having done it, you could 
take your punishment without a word of complaint 
. . . . though you were hard upon me, dear — 

very hard.” 

She was smoothing the hair from his forehead as 
she spoke, satisfying by the mere touch of him, the 
body and soul hunger with which she had longed for 
him through the last terrible weeks. 

Jack dropped his head down beside hers on the 
pillow. If she could love and cleave to him thus, 
believing him guilty, was he not indeed the richest 
man on earth ? Presently he would tell her — pres- 
ently. 

Daffy, who had always an exquisitely fine sense of 
when he was in the way, had slipped out of the 
room, and gone down to the overjoyed Mrs. Chick 
10 


146 THE MYSTERY OF NO, /J. 

to help her to get something very nice for din- 
ner. 

“ If, for one brief moment,” said Elizabeth, with 
her lips to Jack’s cheek, “ you suspected me of having 
disloyal thoughts to you, you must very soon have 
known how impossible such a thing could be. I 
could bear all the rest, but not that — not that ! He 
was our friend, and I trusted and honored him.” 

She paused a moment, then went on again. 

“ Once I loathed and hated him, but 1 have 
suffered so much since that morning, and I have 
forgiven him now. Sometimes I have thought, that 
not knowing I was sleeping there, he came down to 
speak to you. . . . but you know best. It is 

true I had a little secret with him, my husband, and 
it concerned you. I could not bear to see you 
worried for money, and I might not sell those miser- 
able sapphires (though I broke that vow afterward), 
and I asked Barry to help me sell a reversion to 
which I was entitled, and he was finding out all 
about it for me, and two or three times we met to 
talk it over. That night I sent him a note — just two 
or three lines — telling him he might conclude the 
matter for me, and I gave it to Rose to place in his 
room. I never once woke during that night, and in 
the morning ” — she paused trembling. 

“ How I hated him as I saw him lying there, when 


THE MYSTERY OF NO. Ij. 14 / 

once I had looked in your eyes ! O, my God, that 
look of yours brings the color to my face whenever 
I think of it ! [“ God forgive me,” groaned Jack.] 
“ How could I be so vile a thing, and in so short a 
time ? I was angry — I could not have kneeled to 
you tken. Afterward ” — her head sank lower. 

“ Elizabeth — my little love, my darling,” he said, 
taking the small, pale face in both his hands, “ try 
and remember, my sweet. After Rose went down- 
stairs that morning, did she burn anything when 
she came back ? ” 

“ Yes — I smelt something like paper burning, 
but I didn’t notice. I was listening for your step on 
the stairs. O ! Jack ! How long are they going to 
let you stay with me ? ” 

Jack looked down very solemnly and earnestly into 
Elizabeth’s blue eyes — bluer and sweeter now, surely 
than they had ever been before. 

‘‘ Elizabeth, little wife,” he said, “ I did not kill 
poor Barry. I thought — don’t take your arms away 
from me, child — don’t shy away from me. I thought 
that you killed him. Stay ! forgive me yet once more 
— I thought that you had allowed him to admire 
you, for he loved you, Elizabeth, O ! he loved you ! 
and that he had misunderstood you, and you, in 
your horror and anger at his appearance there, had 
slain him.” 


148 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

Elizabeth lay like one stupefied, gazing at Jack. 

“ Can you forgive me, love ? ” he said, “ that I 
could live with you, know your character, and all 
your sweet goodness, yet believe you capable of such 
a brutal act of madness as that ? And I came to 
actually exult in it as a proof of how dearly you 
loved me ; but my only fear was, that when you 
accused yourself, they would believe you.” 

“And so you could die for me ? ” said Elizabeth, 
with trembling lips ; “ you could not speak to me, 
but you could die for me — all guilty, and worthless as 
I seemed. O ! what am I to deserve such love ? And 
I could think that you — you committed murder ” 

She grew paler yet, her heart almost stilled by 
stress of emotion, then she whispered : 

“ Who did it ? ” 

“ Rose’s lover,’’ he whispered back ; “ it was an 
accident — he came to steal your sapphires.” 

Elizabeth laughed, and at the delicious sound. 
Jack’s heart bounded. 

“ Those sapphires,” she said. “ What did you 
always say about them ? ” Her voice changed 
abruptly. “ Barry — poor Barry ! ” she said. “ O ! 
Heavens, how I have wronged him ! ” The slow 
tears fell heavily down her white cheeks. “ Might I 
not have known that it was impossible for him to 
change so . . . and he loved Daffy, and Daffy 


THE MYSTERY OF NO, 7 J. 1 49 

loved him. But how did he get your pistol ? she 
added, suddenly. 

‘‘ I lent it to him only the week before. After 
being in those riots in Ireland, he fancied himself 
shadowed over here, and carried firearms.” 

“ Then how came that man from Scotland Yard 
to find it in your possession ? ” said Elizabeth, touch- 
ing pitifully one of the hollows in Jack’s young face, 
aged beyond belief during the past weeks. 

“ When everybody had gone, and I was in the 
room alone, I saw something bright shining between 
the bed and the wall. It was the pistol I had lent 
poor Barry. I had barely hidden it, when I turned 
and saw Mr. Skewton.” 

“And so Rose drugged me that night?” said 
Elizabeth, thoughtfully, “and it was at her sugges- 
tion I first started the sleeping downstairs — which 
you never liked. But I had a horror of that low- 
ceilinged room at the top. O ! Jack, if only we had 
not let p6or Barry in ! ” 

“ It’s no good looking back,” said Jack, manfully, 
“ it was all a miserable chapter of accidents — for 
Janin never meant to kill him. But he is sure of a 
light sentence.” 

“ Who is Janin ? ” said Elizabeth, so emboldened 
by happiness that she began to remember she had 
not broken her fast that day. 


150 THE MYSTERY OF NO. IJ. 

Rose’s sweetheart. And but for Janin — and 
because he loved Daffy so much, that he actually 
confessed, more to make the little chap happy than 
to save me, I do believe — I should not be here to- 
night.” 

“ God bless Janin, then ! ” said Elizabeth. 

“ God bless Janny ! ” echoed Daffy’s voice, from 
the door, as, tied up in Mrs. Chick’s apron, he first 
ran and kissed them both, then asked what they 
would please to like for dinner ? “ Because,” he 

added, with a shout of triumph, “ us is going to 
cook it ! ” 


THE END. 




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